Baptisms of Fire
by midnight-blue
Summary: JS. You can't see the worst scars
1. Little Boys Don't Live Forever

**Title:** Baptisms of Fire  
**Author:** Kristin (midnight_blue)  
**Rating:** Strong PG-13 - Mild R  
**Disclaimer:** Never mine, these characters belong to Hank, CBS, and Bruckheimer, with the exception of my own original characters.  
**Summary:** You can't see the worst scars

**Notes:** This was a long project. Writing it in one month put a lot of pressure on me and all the other NaNo authors, but I was successful and I'm proud of that. That success, however, was not gained alone. I want to thank Lauren so much for just being there and being a great friend and staying up some late nights getting me through plot points and encouraging me and telling me my story didn't suck! And my family for the time I spent ignoring them. And lastly, the readers. And I'd just like the say...I do some horrible things in this story and I really hope you all don't hate the story for it, but it just seemed to fit. And also...I usually tread very lightly when it comes to original characters, but the ones I created were necessary for the story, so I hope they're not annoying and unlikeable. Enjoy!

**baptism of fire:** A severe ordeal experienced for the first time. 

~*~ 

There is no street with mute stones and no house without echoes.   
-Gongora 

~*~ 

*****

**Chapter 1: Little Boys Don't Live Forever**

He'd been a boy once and his mom smoked Newports -- only halfway -- then she'd stop and throw the smoking butt into the night off their back porch, cross her arms over her knees as she pulled them to her chest. She'd just sit there, sit there for...hours, it seemed, and he'd push aside a curtain and watch her and wonder what made her stare at the stars that she couldn't see and cry to a voice that wasn't there. 

One night, he sat next to her and she puffed a cigarette like a pro, clutched it in her right hand and blew the smoke lazily from her mouth as it caught the cold night air and the two merged in a brilliant dance of loneliness. 

"You okay, Ma?" 

The air hit his skin with pinpricks and he suddenly wished he'd brought his jacket as he looked down at his pajama bottoms and tugged his sleeves further down his arm. The rest of the house was silent, his father gone...to the bar perhaps. Seemed even when he was home, he wasn't. He missed the way the house felt since his sister had left and his brother was working. But a moment like this, alone with his mother -- he wouldn't appreciate until he never had it again. 

"Just balancing my checkbook, " she smiled from the corner of her mouth and he laughed. 

"You got a great laugh, kid." 

She brought the cigarette back to her mouth, watched her progress, and tossed it as usual into the air. She pulled her legs against her chest and studied herself for a moment. She thought of her husband and children and the way they took her for granted unless they needed something. Her husband, even, had started regarding her as the woman who did the chores around the house and she wanted to stop being that woman, wanted to be the woman she had once been. 

She didn't look at him -- her son; not yet. She didn't want to see the unwavering trust in his eyes; the trust she knew she might one day break. She was glad for his ignorance, glad that tonight it could be just them like it might never be again. 

"It gets damn lonely sometimes." 

His young mind couldn't comprehend the words beyond their bluntness, though he realized it meant his mother wasn't as simple as he'd always thought -- it meant, he supposed, that not everything was perfect, and that cold night long ago he realized for the first time that nothing lasted forever, because his mother had lost something long ago. And when he would sit on this same spot ten years from now, her face would be a memory, gone with the rest of the world's lost and lonely people smiling through their tears. 

Ten years from now, he would remember the way her soft, curly, brunette hair had been let down from its hasty ponytail and been allowed to float on the cold breeze. 

Ten years from now, he would remember the way her hands looked as the pathetic porch light illuminated their quiet moment, holding them in the spotlight and he would notice the way they seemed to carry her pain in the cracks and wrinkles no one as young as she should have. 

Ten years from now, he'd remember the face she held at this moment -- the one that seemed to carry a pain she had never asked for. The face that lied in her sleep and whispered platitudes to her children she wanted to believe could free them where she couldn't. 

Ten years from now, he would remember the two tears that fell down her cheek and the way she tried to hide it and the pain he felt for a moment that maybe he was sharing something with her that no one else ever would. 

Two tears -- one for herself and one for all the things she would never do, looking at him and picturing the man he might become only in the illusions she could conjure up. 

Ten years from now, he would remember her and how she was more than just Doris Malone, more than just a woman who had been pushed aside and defined by her husband and children. She was more than that. 

She was beautiful. 

"So lonely sometimes I don't even know..." 

She stopped and looked at him, cupped his face in her cold hands. 

"Listen, Jack Malone...you're gonna grow up and get married and you're gonna be in love...for a while..." 

One hand fell into her lap, the other continuing its caress on his cheek. 

"...and then, Jackie, maybe you won't, maybe you'll remember how it used to be and how it isn't and you'll forget it all. But, just -- you don't always know who you belong to and sometimes the one you're with isn't the one you need to be with and maybe...maybe you'll never know..." 

'Mom?' He wanted to ask. 'What's wrong?' But he didn't. 

He could hear the distant sound of a door closing and knew his father had returned and his mother became Mrs. Jonathan Malone once again, but he would always remember that she had let him see a part of her that had once been just...Doris...a girl once, young like he was now, and he smiled at the thought. 

She stood and pushed her hair behind her ears, picked up the apron she had thrown on the patio chairs, tied it around her waist, and paused before she entered the house again, smoothing out the wrinkles, and glanced at her young son whose flannel pajama bottoms reminded her she needed to do a load of laundry tomorrow. 

Her hand went out and he stood, his black hair moving in swift motions with the cold breeze, a half smile still lingering on his face. He took her hand and looked up at her, watching her smile in return with an odd look on her face. 

"What?" 

"Some girl's going to fall hard and fast for you and it'll be magic, " she spoke, smiling wider, " oh, you're gonna break some hearts, Valentino." 

Valentino. She liked calling him after that old silent film actor he'd catch her watching on their black and white. She liked him for some reason -- perhaps because he was mysterious and she could pretend what he was really saying -- and maybe because he had these dark, beautiful, tragic eyes she could forget herself in. 

If she had to call him something, he didn't mind that. He wanted to be beautiful to someone someday. He wanted to be someone worth loving. 

He thought of what she'd said and wondered if maybe one day they would make sense, but they didn't until he'd married himself and felt the distance pass between them and he could understand maybe the lonely woman he'd once seen sitting on their back porch smoking when no one was watching. 

He didn't understand the words until he met Samantha Spade. 

"Jackie, " his mother whispered as she tucked him back into bed, "sleep tight." 

He couldn't see her face anymore and she asked one more thing of him. 

"Will you do something for me?" 

"Yeah, " he replied. 

"Will you keep smiling, no matter what, just -- just keep your smile?" 

"Sure, Ma." 

The door shut and the little boy grew up. 


	2. You Know You Won't Be Back

**Chapter 2: You Know You Won't Be Back**

As a little girl, she had once eased into the comfort of a stable, happy family like a crutch and what may have seemed foreign to others was simply and plainly her normalcy. That's how it had been once, but as she grew, an awareness of certain things came over her like the slow rise of the sun over peaks and valleys, the light of truth slowly encompassing each crevice and dark corner. 

An awareness of herself grew, of what she supposed some would call home, and she relied on her few scattered certainties: her mother and brother. 

Her mother had been vibrant and whole once, though her face as young and happy seemed so distant she could've imagined it. Then, the darkness came. Her father's distance had always hung like a gloomy cloud over Samantha and her brother, but they took the solace escaping away to the streets of their small town provided. 

One day, she walked into her house as she always had, the sun waning in the western sky, and could feel the change come over her like a cool mist, a change she knew would keep her forever in this one moment wishing she would've stayed that extra ten minutes at her friend's house or stopped by the ice cream store on her way home, or even...even maybe climbed that birch tree in the vacant lot two blocks over like she'd been itching to do since they cleared out the broken glass. 

She could've done any of those things or all of them and each in its own way would've provided that extra cushion time allowed from reality. She could've done those things, but she didn't and she would always mark that moment with other things she wished she hadn't done, the weight of all those mistakes making her wonder what in fact she had done right in her life. 

So as the summer heat eased its grasp and the cool air replaced it, the last tendrils of freedom reminded her of not only school but the last memory of her innocence she had preserved in her mind. 

The screen door made the same sound as she shut it, making sure it didn't slam because, we don't let doors slam like that, Samantha, or then I have to fix it and you know daddy doesn't like to do that. He's busy. 

Daddy's always busy, and away, and sometimes...drunk and mean. 

Her mother was away, she could tell. The sky blue Cadillac was noticeably absent from the driveway, and Samantha shuffled her books to the left side of her body as she closed the door, creeping silently into the dark house and listening to the whispers from the living room. She set the books down and crawled to the staircase, huddled in a dark corner and watched her brother, now 18, argue with her father, whose stained clothes hung loosely around his chest and whose breath reeked of alcohol even from her vantage point. 

"Look at you, you're a bum. You're forty-five years old. And what do you do, what do you do? You sit around here and you just -- you suck the life out of everyone. That's what you do. You've destroyed Mom, you've messed me up...you're like a disease. You move from one victim to another." 

"You got no right to talk to me like that, boy, I'm your father." 

"Father!" He spat. "You live in the same house as me, that doesn't mean you're my father. And now you're going to destroy Samantha and she doesn't deserve it. She deserves a real father, not a stupid drunk like you." 

The bitter sound of an angry hand hitting soft flesh rang in her ears and sliced through the otherwise silent house like a knife. Samantha flinched and curled further into herself, hoping to disappear into the wood behind her and escape the fight. 

Her father heard the creak, and in his drunken haze, moved towards the sound, toward the dark corner Samantha had burrowed herself into. 

"You little bitch, hiding over here so you can go tell Mommy how Daddy was bad and hit Matthew, right? You gonna go tell Mommy, little Sammy? Huh, little Sammy, " he slurred, some of his words running into each other like bumper cars at the fair. 

She curled her hands into fists and brought them to her face to shield her from what she thought would be a slap just as her brother had endured. It didn't come though. The sound of running footsteps filled her ears and she allowed herself to open her eyes and glance at the form of her brother towering over her, shielding his sister from whatever might've laid ahead. 

His strong hands shoved his father back, who stumbled on the small throw rug in front of their coffee table. 

"Go sober up, " Matthew said, turning to lift his sister with ease from her hideaway, and carried her up the stairs. 

In the quiet of her room, she felt safe and protected. Years from now, she would remember the way her brother's sandy blonde hair, slightly in need of a haircut, fell over his eyes gently as he bent to tuck her in after whispering of fairy tales and silly stories she felt she had overgrown at her adult age of six. 

As a child, you forgot many things, especially a young child. You could remember when you learned to read or tied your shoes or learned your alphabet, because those were monumental and joyous events. As a child as well, you could remember pain of certain degrees, but not always remember what had caused it. 

She looked at her brother as he sat beside her, caught sight of his eyes in the moonlight, and wondered, in her young mind, why he looked so sad, just as her mom. She wondered what he had seen in his young life, and only in her teen years and adulthood could she begin to understand the impact they had both felt from one man that had seen fit to stay in their tiny house on Payton St. and continue living if only to suck something pure from their young hearts. 

She sometimes wished she couldn't see the horrors lying around the foundations of her childhood, would've been grateful for blissful ignorance. Youth, it seemed, was that small fraction of age still untouched by pain and tragedy. 

His voice cracked as he spoke to her, wondering if she even understood what he was saying, so young, it seemed -- so young to be here. 

"Sam, " he whispered, "I've got to go away tomorrow." 

She smiled with naive innocence. "Will you get me a present?" 

"No, hon, I -- I won't be back for a long time. But I'm gonna write to you and you can draw me some pictures, okay?" 

Her face quickly moved from sadness to excitement in the span of a second and she reached out her tiny arms in an offering of a hug, which he quickly and gratefully accepted. He pulled back and stroked her fine, blonde hair in quiet amazement. 

"You don't forget me, okay, Sammy? Don't forget your big brother, " his voice cracked and he stood up, walked away. 

"Goodbye, Matty, " she giggled, turning over in her bed. 

"Not goodbye, " he whispered back, and left her room for good. 

She would remember that, she would later learn -- would remember the sound he made as he left her room that quiet, summer night as the crickets played a song for her. In with the happy times and the bad times, there would just be this moment where her brother had once been Matthew Spade -- a slightly, fractured young man, but nearly whole. She missed that. 

Not goodbye. 

Not goodbye. 

She turned it over in her head. 

Goodbyes were forever. 


	3. Sketches of Pain

**Chapter 3: Sketches of Pain**

When he was young and his mother died, it had the effect you expect when they're sixteen and their mother dies and maybe they could've prevented it if they'd called me at work, damnit -- at least, that's what his father liked to tell him when he'd burn the chicken and undercook the noodles and he would come in like he always did, waiting for something. 

He'd like to say it when they'd sit down and his father would spit the dinner into a napkin and ask him why he couldn't get it right and make sure to remind him that his mother used to sit in that empty chair next to him and maybe if he hadn't watched that stupid show it wouldn't be this way. 

His father was always nice about it of course, you see, because he wouldn't yell, he'd just tell him these things in a calm, rational voice like they were immutable truths. 

Jack started finding reasons to keep away from that house, that house with too many memories. He'd find ways to be after school until it was dark so he could slink into the house and avoid the questions, get out of cooking the dinner he could never make just right; just the way she used to make it, perfect in every way. Dinners were never too hot or too cold when she cooked them, and they always had the perfect coalescence of ingredients that all compounded into one little taste of Heaven. 

The quintessential Italian housewife, Doris Malone could cook a lasagna on Sunday nights for the whole family, whip up some canneloni, ravioli, spaghetti, ziti, manicotti, and tortellini, filling the house with warmth and aromas you could smell as you fidgeted in your seventh period class -- the one with all that Algebra and Trigonometry and foregin gibberish you knew you'd never need. 

So he had to leave, and he did, as soon as he graduated. He joined the Rangers and there happened to be a war being fought in a country overseas that he'd talked about in school as though it was something he could detach from until...well, he couldn't, and he was in the thick of it. 

Too young too understand, as he guessed they all were, and too old perhaps to just leave in the way he wanted to. So he fought and he made it out and he considered himself lucky, save for a few injuries that just never left, like his aching knee. 

The day it happened, they were routinely doing a search of the outlying jungles and he could've sworn it seemed too quiet somehow to be real. And it was. Because then the gunfire started, and the sound came that you couldn't forget; the sound of the popping bullets meeting air and flesh, the sound of your friends screaming for life and death, and the sound of silence as both came. 

He took a hit and fell to his stomach, praying he would be spared, and as he lay there, a guy he knew fell down beside him and they both watched each other for a while until it stopped. But they laid there for a while, neither moving, just watching the other take a breath and suddenly, his chest stopped its rhythm and he was all alone. 

Maybe, he thought now, everything wasn't as perfect when his mother had been alive all that time, but he'd allowed himself, in the years since her death and his time in Vietnam, to create in his mind the life he may not have necessarily had, but the life he wanted and needed. So, things had gone wrong, right? Bad things happened. Very bad things. Things maybe he could've stopped, but see, that was where the beauty of illusion lay. 

Because Jack Malone, in his mind, could fix the things that weren't perfect. He could fix his mother's death, he could pretend he had saved her and it would feel good on the nights he could believe it. He could pretend he had saved his friends in Vietnam. 

He could pretend he had a happy marriage, and sometimes, in his mind, those things felt good, so good...they were real for a split second. 

But then, then he would know of course that those things, those things of make believe were just that. Some things were never meant to be imagined, like his mother dying -- because it would never change -- and other things, like his marriage, were never meant to be reality, because it could change, he just wasn't sure if he had the strength to do that. 

* 

In retrospect, she should have realized he was leaving before he spoke the words. 

As her two worlds, her past and present, merged in thought, Samantha Spade folded her notepad under her arm, tossed her pen onto her desk, and fell into her chair with half-hearted abandon, thinking of the day 26 years ago when her life changed irrevocably. 

As her hands touched the old wood of her FBI desk, running slowly along the smooth contours and grooves, she could again feel that half-ass excuse for a screen plastered on their door beneath her childish fingers; it felt as it always did, beginning to peel away from the door. She remembered the feel of each curve, the mesh of it implanting tiny squares against her hand. She remembered the thought that entered her mind, the thought that her father might be home, be mad that she had touched the already damaged screen and contributed to its decrepit state. 

She felt, sitting at her desk, the way she had 26 years ago when her little legs stumbled up the concrete steps, her shoes each a step ahead of the other as her untied laces strung out against the dirt and her nimble hands had decided to wait before entangling themselves in the technique of tying she hadn't yet mastered. She had walked home carefully, counting the cracks in the street, cradling the library books preciously in her arms, anticipating the worlds they would open for her in mere minutes. Matthew would tie her shoes and Matthew would read to her and she would settle into that comfort once more. 

She felt the way she did all those years ago when she finally entered that house and saw two packed duffel bags in the corner, too young to fully understand why they were there and why her clothes weren't in them as well. She could've gone, she really could've. All she needed was a book or two, a doll, and a few clothes, and then -- and then she could go and she wouldn't be any trouble, her adult mind promised as it merged with the child she had once been. 

But she hadn't gone, and...he did write, she did draw, and for a while they had this between them. She would draw pictures of their house, her school, her dresses, birthday cakes, Christmas trees, the sun of spring, and the dead leaves of winter. 

She would remember sometimes the sound his bed made across the silent hallway on late summer nights as he would roll over fitfully, needing a sleep that wouldn't come because of nightmares in reality that wouldn't go away. 

Time passed, and the letters still came, but there was a greater length of time between them. She thought of it sometimes, but she saw the news as well, and knew of course that he would write when he could. Then, one day...the letters stopped. And little Sammy kept drawing pictures; pictures of faces and people that had changed since he was away. Pictures of the life he once had, so when he did come back, he would have these things and then she could tell him a story. 

Little Sammy kept drawing and little Sammy grew up too. 

_You like to draw, Sammy, huh? Draw your little trees and houses..._

Twenty-six years and she could still hear his voice too, her father's. Sometimes he would play poker late at night, stumble up the staircase and crash into the hallway and she could hear him out there. Her mother would be away sometimes for work and he would come in and tell her he had lost the money and she should keep quiet about it. 

_Don't tell your mommy what happened to that money, Sammy, you keep quiet now..._

She flinched. 

_Keep quiet..._

She could hear Danny behind her, dropping a folder onto his desk. 

_Keep_

"Samantha?" 

_...keep..._

"Samantha?" 

_...quiet..._

His hand on her shoulder broke her from her thoughts with a slight jump, and she covered up her surprise in a laugh, Danny returning the false smile. 

"You okay?" 

"Fine." 

He walked away and she searched her drawer for a pen, pausing just before she closed the drawer back up, an unconscious voice reminding her not to let it slam. 

_We don't slam doors in this house, Sammy..._

Right, Dad, sorry. 

_Keep quiet..._


	4. Best Deceptions

**Chapter 4: Best Deceptions**

**Sunday, December 13, 2003**

His thick, youthful, sandy-blonde hair had aged, not so gracefully, into a thinning, darker shade of blonde as it waited in anticipation of turning a full-blown mop of silvery whisps atop his head. He wasn't built, but he certainly wasn't the gawky teen he had once been. When he'd left his home on Payton St. to fall into a world he couldn't have thought up in his worst nightmares, he had stopped being that gawky teen and become not so much a man, but a being devoid of extraneous human functions, a being who knew how to shoot and kill people. 

He could still see their faces sometimes, though the eyes, more often than not, were the only identification he had of most of his kills. It sounded so callous to say it like that -- his kills. The gun itself had changed, the weight of it unfamiliar now, but the trigger felt identical to its intensity, identical to the way it shook when he fired off a round. 

As a cop in Brooklyn, he got his fair share of horrors here as well, had been expecting nothing fluffy and easy about being a Homicide detective in a city. 

He'd also appreciated the privilege of watching his little sister join the NYPD as a cop herself, struggling through the menial street beats and lunatics she would bring in on every shift, finding out what she truly wanted was to find missing people. 

Missing people. 

People...who had lost themselves, who had been lost to society. People, he reflected, who seemed to resemble his sister in more ways than one, and his own life, if he stopped to think long enough about it. 

Over drinks at bars, he would catch sometimes the mention of that war people liked to forget about now; he would hear it spoken in hushed whispers as men with severed lives bled into their whiskey over tables marred by cigarettes and angry tears. 

On the street, every now and then, he'd walk past a homeless man huddled against a brick wall, away from society, muttering incoherencies about taking that hill, charging forward, never stopping, never stopping men, no matter what. It seemed to be around him no matter what he did. 

He had fallen into the bottle once, a few years after he had gotten back from Vietnam, and his future prospects seemed few and far between, he had no love life, no friends really to speak of -- the friends he did have hadn't come back across the ocean with him -- and he felt he had lost his little sister somehow. And maybe he had, maybe he had made that little girl believe he would always take care of her and she had fallen into a trust with him he couldn't keep. 

Maybe he deserved what happened if he couldn't keep her safe from him, from Frank Spade. 

So all these bitter things combined together into little perfect excuses to give up, to stop trying, to keep the bottles in shelves and cabinets, and cold in the fridge. He had all his preferences. He liked bourbon, not whiskey; he'd take scotch on the rocks, never dry; when he was lazy, he'd open up a pack of beer, when he felt good some days, he'd fall into a fancy bottle of amaretto. 

Then one day, when he was 30, and Samantha had turned eighteen -- the age he'd been when he last was free -- she called him, told him about how she had wanted to run away and their mother had found her and she had wanted to go to him, because -- because she really did love you, Matthew, and she wanted to know you again. 

That's when it hit him, when he realized what he'd truly become. 

His father. 

He'd become his father and his sister wanted to be with him, wanted him to be her brother again and he clutched the phone in one hand, his shot glass in the other, lip wrinkling up in disgust at the amber liquid his life had turned into. 

_You're a bum, Dad..._

Oh, God. 

_...just a lazy bum who drinks all the time_

Oh, oh, God. 

_You destroy everything_

He had become the very poison that had sucked him out of that house on Payton St. in the first place. So he had dumped the liquid escape down the drain, trashed all the bottles, and found a rehab. They fixed his alcoholism, the addiction he'd resorted to to stop the images. But they didn't fix the thing -- the thing that was wrong inside his head. 

No one had. 

So he walked around Brooklyn, the police station, his apartment, carrying this thing in his head, this thing that wouldn't go away. 

This war. 

_You're worthless, you bum..._

This...this blood. 

_...you're..._

This death. 

_worthless..._

Death. 

He shook the images away for now, pushed them back into his mind as he walked into the police station on 49th, threw his keys onto his desk, throwing himself along with them. He couldn't keep an organized desk, but he had a system for his disarray, he could pick apart the important things from the simple trash he hadn't bothered throwing away. 

"Matt?" 

Glancing up, he took notice of his partner, Alexis Collins. It's not that she didn't sleep, he knew she did, but no matter, it seemed, she always had this disheveled look of someone who never quite ended a case, who could never be satisfied by simply finding the perpetrator and putting them away. Alex, like Matthew, didn't simply feel a sense of duty towards the victims; instead, the two of them -- they bled into their cases like an ink stain on a white shirt you couldn't ever wash away. 

They had this same heart and devotion and they worked well together because of this, because they both understood the level they would go to in bringing justice. They both understood the cost. And since neither had a spouse or children of their own, they could afford this dedication at all times, in all aspects. 

"Got another one, Matt, " she spoke, throwing a folder on his desk. 

He looked up. "Same MO?" 

She nodded in reply. "Second one this week, but this girl was tied up before she was killed." 

His chair squeaked as he leaned back, fingered his collar. 

"Then how do we know it's the same guy?" 

Taking her seat in the desk across from him, she slid three photos, all at various angles to him. He had that feeling again in his gut he always got when he saw the decay a person could become in the choices they made. This girl had made the choice to take a walk one night, on one certain street. Now, she paid for it. Something as simple as they shouldn't have been condemned with the end she had been given. 

"The first victim? She had a 'Y' carved on her chest." 

"Right, but what does --" 

She held up her finger. 

"Let me finish, slick. Our latest victim had an 'O' carved on her chest." 

He bent forward now, interest piqued. 

"Uh-huh. Some random killing? No reason for that. This guy's sending us a message, Matt." 

He grabbed his coat abruptly, Alex following suit. 

"Well, let's get down to the scene and work our magic, " he spoke, looping his free arm through the sleeve and adjusting his collar. 

Alex reached over to fix his tie. 

"It's always crooked, partner, didn't your father give you the lesson on proper tie technique?" 

He brushed the images of his father away, fixing up his facade for Alex, who would be better off not knowing where he'd come from. 

"Must've skipped class that day." 

He gave her a cheeky grin and she rolled her eyes in return, elbowing him lightly in the ribs as they walked to his car and he held the door open for her like always. 

His keys in the ignition, he paused, hands held still on the wheel. 

"Why are we assuming this is a guy, I mean, we don't have any labs back, no indications of sexual assault." 

"I'm not saying it's definitely a guy, Matt, but I would say, without hesitation, that 80% of serial killers are men." 

"And here we stereotype." 

"Bud, I got news for you. Women -- see, we're gentle creatures, we take care of things, love things. Men, on the other hand, they spit and yell and hit." 

"I know some women who do those things." 

"In the Amazon, maybe, South Bronx even. But who goes to war? Men. Men kill, Matt, men hit and hurt you and kill." 

She was using that tone she always used when they bantered like this, teasing and chiding each other in that break of time when they were alone, but there was something beneath that carefully constructed banner of jokes. There were things she didn't know about him, and now, it seemed, things he didn't know about her as well. It bothered him for a second that she hadn't yet shared those hurts with him, until he reminded himself that he had secrets too. 

He had that sick feeling in his stomach again, though, the feeling that he'd once been the kind of guy she was talking about in the heat of a jungle he still felt in dreams. 

"Well, I'm not like most men, Lex, I have feelings. I share. I cry when I see Steel Magnolias, I watch Disney movies." 

"Yeah, well, you're weird, " she answered back, waving her hand at the keys in the ignition, so he turned the key and started the engine. 

A minute passed before she spoke again. 

"Actually, Matt, " she whispered, "you're one of a kind." 

She smiled. 

"Fix your tie." 

* 

Julia Lisardi had been five years old when she left her house on an overcast day, the mid-morning sky looming overhead. She had remained five years old when she disappeared as well, playing on the front lawn while her mother walked down to the gas station at the corner for some eggs to bake cupcakes with. 

And she had remained five years old for the span of two and a half days, five years old, that is, until they found her. Yes, they did find her, and you could call it a blessing, a miracle in fact, given the scant clues and cold trails. You could call it all those things, but when Samantha picked that little girl up from that drainage ditch she had wandered into, her clothes soaked through with water from the torrent of rain pummeling the city, she knew in the way you know unwavering truths: little Julia Lisardi wasn't five years old any longer. 

They had found her in that drainage ditch, but only because she'd somehow escaped or been set free, or numerous other reasons they figured they shouldn't dwell on because they had found her and she had led them to her kidnapper who lay dead by his own shotgun in an old cellar. 

The little hands of Julia Lisardi were still soft and tiny, her body still that small frame of childhood awaiting the growth and maturity age would bring, but she wasn't five years old anymore. 

She never would be again, because something had died in her eyes. Something -- that small flame of purity and innocence you wanted to protect always. She had been used up and drained of all that had once been decent in her. And when Samantha knelt down to hug her as her parents led her away one last time, she felt a tug at her heart, a familiar tug. 

They had found Julia Lisardi alive, yes. 

But...she wasn't alive. 

Not anymore. 

"That kid's going to be messed up, " Danny spoke behind her bitterly. 

"Kids bounce back, " she replied, not believing it. Apparently, neither did he. She listened until she couldn't hear the clipitty-clap of the little girl's black shoes anymore and turned back to Danny where he folded some papers into a folder. 

"What're you doing for Christmas?" She asked. 

He shrugged. "TV dinner. Plastic Christmas tree." 

"No date?" 

"I guess she didn't like my cooking the last time." 

"Oh, it's her loss, Danny, her loss, " Samantha offered back, a grin tugging at the edge of her lips. 

"What, you can do better? You cooking the dinner this year?" 

"Not me, my brother." 

"Matt? He can cook?" 

She folded her arms across her chest, took a seat at her desk, and leaned the chair back against the edge. 

"He can cook circles around you, Serpico." 

Danny laughed, tossing the folder onto his desk. "All right, I'll be there. You going out tonight?" 

"Yeah, Martin's taking me to that little deli over on 62nd." 

"Date?" 

"Not a date, we're just friends, like you and me -- friends, Danny." 

"Did you ever watch _When Harry Met Sally_, Sam? Men and women can't be friends." 

"Are you saying you would want to --" 

"Have a nice night, Sam, enjoy your non-date, " he winked at her, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair. She followed him for a few paces. 

"Danny." 

"Danny." 

"I'll call you later, see how it went, " he waved to her and left. 

She pivoted, walked back to her desk and gathered up her coat, purse, pulled her keys out, and watched Jack in his office out of her left eye. A year had passed since he had told her it was over, since Barry Mashburn, since he had gone back to Maria. Many times, she'd find him asleep at his desk, not bothering to go home more than once a week. 

So he had gone back to his wife. 

But had he really? 

She brushed it off, not wanting to think about it too much or her evening would be ruined. And anyway, she had a da -- dinner. Dinner. Yes. Dinner with Martin. 


	5. Prayers for the Dead

**Chapter 5: Prayers for the Dead**

When you worked a case, any kind of case that required your complete devotion, it took that out of you, your complete and total time. Especially when you were under the wire, when you knew if more than a few days had passed you lost. And somehow you were expected to pick yourself up and move on. 

Oh well, you didn't find that little boy, that working mother, that affectionate father. That happened, you didn't win them all. So you get back in there, you find another one, and that one right erases the one you didn't find and you start all over again. Sometimes the good outweighs the bad or vice versa and so, it's this twisted tug-of-war. 

After a case ended, no matter the outcome, it wasn't as simple as waving that person off to their family or moving that arm around a shoulder in comfort the way you'd become so used to, the muscles had grown a centimeter bigger in that arm; you had to close all the details of that case as well. 

Write up the report, sign off the forms, organize the witness statements, search warrants, notes you took, and on and on and on until it was a process so familiar you could do it in your sleep. The process remained the same, the details, however, always changed. This case, Julia Lisardi, had been closed in an average amount of time and he shuffled through the last minutae of details. 

He looked at the clock, though he didn't have to. The darkness outside told him it was at least six p.m. But he looked at it anyway. He was close. Six twenty. Fifteen minutes from now, he could be on his way home, imagining the smells of a home-cooked meal. 

Jack wondered what they would be having tonight. Pot roast, meatloaf, pork chops? Maybe steak or something simple like chicken nuggets. Then again, maybe they would have something Italian like lasagna, ravioli, spagh -- no. 

His mind stopped that line of thought. 

No Italian tonight. 

He smelled the aroma of garlic and tomatoes and parmesan, all merged in a symphony of heavenly taste. 

He couldn't eat that tonight. 

Ten minutes and he would be out of here. 

Jack imagined what his daughters would be showing him when he got home. Kate would wrap her arms around his leg and he would walk to the table with her like that, being careful not to give her rug burn as they slid across the carpet together. Then Hanna would come from her room, an exceptional essay or perfect Math paper dangling from her fingers. He loved those moments most. 

Then he imagined Maria when he got home. She would be pouring drinks or reading a magazine, glance up from her tasks to give him a half-smile as he entered. She used to do that when she was pregnant with Kate, many years ago, had stopped doing that six months ago, and then, somehow, had started again. He didn't like those moments when he came home. 

He didn't like the perfunctory conversations they'd trade together on the couch after the girls went to bed, talking about their day. She argued a case, he worked a case, she won a case for her client, he lost his case. There would be a ten minute span where they could be interested in the other's day simply because they were two people who happened to do things during the day that filled that span of time. They happened to do things during the day people wrote books about. 

So those little things would fill up time, but when those stories were over, they had nothing left, save for a few kisses on the cheek here and there. The bed was cold when he would roll over, though she was still there. Only, she was so close to the edge on her side, he couldn't feel her against him. 

Samantha had been warm, she always stayed close to him when they were together. 

He stopped his pen. 

Why had he thought of her that way so suddenly? 

He knew why. 

Because she had started leaving with Martin. They had built a friendship over the last few months, more so since last Christmas, and he hadn't thought much of it. She had a close bond with Danny and he'd never questioned if it went beyond friendship. 

Something about this felt different. 

He capped his pen. He was done with his report. Not hungry, he decided where he would be going tonight. 

He didn't feel like going home. 

* 

"You having a good time?" Martin asked over a plate of chips. 

She nodded. "Where'd you find it?" 

"Stopped here for a sandwich about a week ago, and I thought you might like it. Plus, they've got the cheesecake you like." 

"Thanks for bringing me here, Martin." 

"Sure." 

They lapsed into a silence she couldn't yet deem comfortable or awkward. She had found a friendship in him she hadn't known possible. When she'd first met Martin Fitzgerald, he'd been a rich boy with a pretty face used to petty crimes in Seattle and she wasn't sure whether he could handle their work, this city, or her. 

She didn't want the attention he gave her at first until she felt the chilly absence of companionship from a man she'd shared her bed with enough times to call him more than just a casual sex thrill. You don't think you want some things until the thing you want doesn't want you anymore. 

Then you still don't know what you want, but you're a step away from love and a step closer to loneliness. When you're lonely, you cling to pretty faces, and Martin...well, he'd always had a pretty face. 

Today, she reflected, was no ordinary day. They had closed a case, yes, but that wasn't what distinguished it from every other day. Today, in fact, was the same day that her mother had died ten years ago. She shared that secret with only her brother, and that sadness crept to her throat as she drank the warm coffee, leaving a bitter taste on her tongue. 

She would go to the grave after this, lay some flowers, and it would hurt and she'd need a release, an escape. Matthew, once, had fallen into the bottle for release. Samantha Spade, currently Jack Malone-less, was ready to fall against Martin for release, that temporary physical release. It wouldn't take the pain away, but, for a few hours, it would keep her mother from her thoughts. 

"I hate to cut it short, Martin, but there's some things I need to do. Do you think -- could you come over later tonight?" 

He seemed surprised for a moment, then stood with her, laying a few bills on the table. 

"Uh, sure. You want --" 

"Thanks again for dinner. Oh, and, bring some cheesecake with you, " she said, patting his arm. 

* 

Her mother had been like a monument once, tall and dignified, standing defiantly as if to say, 'Nothing can knock me down.' And maybe she really had been that way once. Maybe all people were like that once. Some stayed that way for a long time, others lasted merely a few years. 

Her mother had made it to nineteen, but then she'd met Frank and had Matthew and Samantha and the torches she'd held like beacons of light above her head started to lower, year by year until they vanished completely. Then the other things would crumble. The arms would fall away, and she'd forget the warm touch of love; the legs would disappear, and she'd forget the sensation of walking along the beach in a lover's embrace; then the eyes and nose and smile, and lastly...lastly, the heart. 

And then her mother died. 

But maybe, like little Julia Lisardi, Andy Deaver, Siobahn Arintero, Josh Corbin, Francis Pace, and countless others, her mother had died long before her body. 

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." 

She placed the rose against her mother's name, rubbed her numb nose in the cold air, and touched the ground of the ones lost and gone forever. 

A prayer. 

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners." 

A prayer for them. 

"Now, and at the hour of our death. Amen, " she whispered the length of it, standing reverently. 

"Samantha?" 

She jumped minutely, relaxed at the warm hand on her shoulder as her brother's voice rustled her hair. 

"You miss her?" 

She could see his shrug, though her face still read the silver letters of identification on the stone that her mother had become. 

"Yeah." 

"It got bad, Matt, " she said. They didn't do this often, bring up their childhood. But sometimes she felt an unconscious hurt towards him, a hurt that he had left her, left her in that house with the man who liked to drink whiskey and chew tobacco. 

He knelt beside her, placing an identical rose across from hers, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. 

"Let's get out of here, kid, I'll buy you a hot chocolate." 

They stood, and she brushed some dirt from her coat. 

"No, thanks, I'm full, I just ate dinner." 

"Date?" 

She rolled her eyes. What was with that word today? 

"Deli sandwich with Martin." 

Something flickered in her brother's eyes. 

"What?" 

"Nothing." 

"No, seriously, what?" 

"You dating the guy, Sammy?" 

She flinched. "Don't call me that, Matt, please." 

_Don't slam that door, Sammy_

"And, no, I'm not dating him. We're just --" 

"Spare me the rehearsed lines, okay? It's me. Are you going to get serious with Martin?" 

"I don't know. I don't know anymore." 

"How do you feel with Martin?" 

"Good." 

"How did you feel with Jack?" 

"Good." 

He rubbed a hand over his chin. 

"All right, you're at home, it's late at night, it's cold, you can't get warm. You're just freezing your ass off and you're all alone, there's no one next to you, who are you missing, Sam? Who are needing to keep you warm?" 

"Jack." 

"Then what are you doing with Martin?" 

She shrugged, feeling tears prick at her eyes. It hurt to speak of Jack, he was an old love she could never get back. 

"Trying not to feel so cold and lonely, Matt." 

The tears came freely now, and Matt pulled her to his chest, and they stood there, atop the burial site of the woman who had brought them to this very spot today, one crying for the life she wanted, the other bleeding for the life he'd lost. 

She thought of her prayer for them again. 

Prayers for the dead. 


	6. Faith and Other Lies

**Chapter 6: Faith and Other Lies**

Jack had shut off the light in his office, walked into the empty conference room, and stood behind Samantha Spade's chair, visualizing the curve of her shoulders as she sat hunched over files and notes, papers spread across the smooth wood as her eyes pored over the details of a case with intense scrutiny. 

He liked to watch her most when she didn't know it, because he could still love her that way. Maria wouldn't have to know, OPR wouldn't, his coworkers, Samantha, and he sometimes didn't notice himself because the action was so familiar it was like moving. 

In most ways, Jack could be defined as a man who never backed down, who stood solemnly behind his convictions, his decisions, right or wrong, and his instincts. He acted on adrenaline, passion, and emotion most of all because you couldn't rely on your mind alone. 

Your mind helped you figure out where you were going, but your heart took you there. Your heart fueled the last leaps of faith and that was who Jack Malone was. He took leaps of faith, he took them fast and hard. 

But for some reason, some reason he couldn't quite understand, he didn't, in fact, act with his heart in the matters that were dictated by it the most. He relied on his head, his head that told him, Jack, do something right for once. So he listened to his head. 

Doing the right thing wasn't always right. Doing the wrong thing wasn't always right. So he was left with these twisted puzzles, puzzles he had to somehow make sense of. Listening to his head hurt more than he could've known. 

So tonight, he touched the spot on the back of her chair where her head would normally be and decided to listen to his heart for once. 

* 

"Extra strawberries, " Martin said, placing the styrofoam container in front of Samantha as he took a seat next to her on her couch. 

He kept his coat on for the moment, waiting for a signal from her to go or stay, for that look in her eyes that would finally say, Martin, I've been blind, let's stop kidding ourselves. That look, he knew, would never come. The look he would see instead would be one of pain and loneliness, loneliness so encompassing she couldn't feel exactly what she wanted anymore and that look she would fling to him would be one that said, Martin, think for me because I can't anymore. 

"My mother died ten years ago today." 

He folded his steepled hands into his lap, leaned back against the soft cushions, and waited. 

"That's where I went -- to the cemetery." 

"Alone?" 

"Danny offered to come this morning, but I -- it's just something I do alone." 

She didn't mention her brother and the conversation they'd had and the tears she'd shed for two men she couldn't put together in a way that seemed to make sense. She cried tears for two men she couldn't understand. Tears for a man she couldn't figure out how to love and tears for a man she couldn't figure out how to stop loving. 

"She had cancer, but she went pretty quick, died in her sleep. It was peaceful, and we were with her, so I guess you couldn't ask for more than that." 

"Peaceful?" 

"Yeah." 

"Was it always peaceful, Sam?" 

She'd started letting him call her that, but it still felt wrong coming from his lips, no matter how often he said it. 

"No." 

He shifted closer to her, didn't seem to notice her flinch slightly at the growing contact. 

"We all have our secrets, don't we?" 

"We do, Sam. We do." 

"When I was seeing the therapist, she said eventually it might be good for me to get in touch with Ted, Fran, Libby, Richard, and even Barry." 

"Barry?" 

She nodded, looking down at the blanket covering her feet. 

"Why?" 

"I don't really know, but she said maybe it'd be good to just talk to him because of the circumstances, because of the guilt he'd had about me getting shot in the first place." 

"So did you do it?" 

She pulled the blanket up to her chest, leaned her head to the side against the cushion, closer to his face. 

"He actually got in touch with me. Sent me a letter." 

Martin's eyes shot open in surprise. 

"Did you write back?" 

"Not yet, I just -- I didn't know what to say. What do you say? 'Remember that time we were in the bookstore together and, oh yeah, I got shot? Well, it's all better now and my life's only a little more screwed up than it was.' Great letter." 

"It's the truth, though." 

"Is the truth always best?" 

"Maybe not, but it's always right." 

He couldn't mistake the sadness in her eyes, bent forward to touch her cheek with his hand. 

"What are you afraid of, Sam?" 

"Being alone." 

Martin bent closer, shyly, asking her in silence if this was okay, and, getting no resistance, continued moving closer until their lips touched and met in a kiss. Only a few seconds passed before she pulled away, putting a hand against his chest in adamant objection. 

"No, no. This is --" 

"This is okay, Samantha. We're adults, we're --" 

"We're friends, Martin." 

He stopped, stroked a hand through her hair. 

"But we're together here tonight, I'm here, and you're not alone. You're not." 

She leaned her head against his chest, shed a few more tears again that night against his suit and thought of them together. 

You're wrong, Martin. 

You are. 

Yes, she thought, I am alone. 

Martin, for his part, could only sit and be that friend she spoke of. Friends. Yes. It wasn't as bad as it sounded. Sounded good, in fact, sounded natural in some way. They could be this. They could trade secrets and pass notes and tease each other, see movies, be like her and Danny were, be like people in movies were. 

He was okay with this. He would think for both of them. For all of them. 

"Hey Sam, " he said, "I'm not him, but --" 

"Martin --" 

"Hold on. I'm not him, but I am your friend, so you just, just cry as much as you need to and then we'll dig into that cheesecake, okay?" 

She sniffled against his shirt, smiled, grateful for his understanding, grateful that he knew why she couldn't cross that line now, not ever. Grateful she had something to lean against right now. 

* 

Maybe he had lied, maybe he hadn't. It was an ambiguous remark, either way, and the priest could've taken it anyway he wanted to. He took it, most likely, as the bitter, half-hearted disenchantments of a man who had in fact divulged sins in a confessional once, had in fact taken communion before God and a priest, and his mother who waved at him from the back row with her new white, laced gloves. 

Father Walker, he had learned, was smarter than he let on. It was both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes he knew more about you than you thought he did and you couldn't be sure, at any given moment, how much he knew what you were really thinking behind those beautifully veiled half-truths. 

So he ended up here somehow, at St. Germaine's. And it didn't feel like he thought it might. It felt comforting. It felt inviting. It felt right. 

"Jack, I was hoping to see you again soon, " Father Walker spoke as he sat in the pew next to Jack. 

"Felt like taking a walk." 

"So you walked into the Church." 

"The door was open, " he responded wryly, pulling his hands together in a fist and resting them atop the wooden pew. 

"Would you like to confess?" 

Jack smiled again. 

"Still think I'm Catholic." 

"Would you lie to a priest?" 

Jack's silence answered his question, and he leaned back against the wood. 

"I thought so." 

They sat for a moment, one a man of God, the other forgetting how to even start a prayer, it had been so long since he'd done so. 

"Italian, you know? I'm Italian. And, every good Italian is Catholic, or so I've been told. So, yeah, I'm Catholic, and yeah, I went to Mass every Sunday, went to Catholic school. Got shuffled around a lot, so much that the Church was really the only thing I could keep. It was familiar. It never changed." 

"So what happened?" 

"My mother died. And not the normal way; she decided something was bad enough here that she couldn't be around it anymore. And God didn't help her with that. And I prayed to Him to help her, I did. Every night. You know what I got for those prayers, Father Walker? I got a dead mom in the garage when I was sixteen." 

He remembered never being able to go into that garage again, as though the poisoned air would take him as well or ask him why he didn't save her, why he had just sat there on the couch and wondered where she was instead of looking for her like he should have. 

"You may be angry at God for that, but do you still believe in Him?" 

He clenched his fists and shut his eyes, bowed his head between his knees. 

"Yeah, I do. But maybe I don't like him so much anymore. And maybe -- maybe I've lost my faith, Father." 

"We all do, Jack. It's what makes us human." 

He looked up from the ground. 

"How do I get it back?" 

"You have to find it." 


	7. Fools and Kings

**Chapter 7: Fools and Kings**

**Monday, December 14, 2003**

The woman hadn't died very quickly. The bullet, when it finally did end her life, had come as a welcome end to the pain she had endured for at least a day. A woman had been murdered on Monday; a tall, blonde-haired woman in her late 20s who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Five days later, a woman with the same description, same hair color, same build, was found in an alley not too far from the previous victim, only, the marks on her skin indicated she hadn't died there. She had been somewhere before that, been held somewhere and tortured and maybe been whispered promises that she could live if she just did these few things. 

Whatever the circumstances, she'd ended up here. Another victim. The city had claimed another face in its trap, in its dark, secret corners and alleys and dilapidated neighborhoods, its ghettos and slums. The city breeded the evil that grew up and dealt the crack, the heroin, robbed, assaulted, and murdered the other people the city breeded to be hard-working decent people. 

The city breeded both spectrums of humanity and sometimes they clashed together and this, this was what happened. 

A half-naked body covered in dried blood, bruises, with rope burns on her wrists. 

"Leslie Mitchell, " Lex called from where she sat hunched over the body, white gloves thumbing through the victim's wallet. 

"Won't be sure until we get next of kin to ID the body, but from the looks of it, that's her, " she said, showing him the license picture. It was one of the few normal looking pictures he'd seen on a license and that struck him for some reason. Seemed worthless, this death. Then again, they always did. 

Matt turned to one of the forensics lackeys, got a feel for the kind of case they were building here. 

"You gettin' anything?" 

"Pretty good prints, but they could be the victim's, could belong to any hack job walkin' up and down here day and night, pissin' on the wall, shakin' off a high. If it's the same guy, he's pretty careful, I doubt we'll lift any of his." 

Matt nodded, wandered back to his partner, and knelt down beside her. 

"What're you thinkin', Matt?" 

"I don't what to think anything just yet. You give me another dead body like this one, I'll call it something. You ask me now? I'd say we've got two murders, both victims just happen to look like each other." 

* 

"Sandy Granson, age 29. Working as a waitress at O'Reilly's in Midtown. Neighbor reported her missing. No kids, no husband, parents are dead." 

No one wanted to say it, to ask why they were working a case like this when there were other people out there, missing, just like Sandy Granson, who _did_ have kids, who _did_ have significant others; someone's child, someone's friend, someone who was loved by at least one person. Who did Sandy Granson have? 

They wanted to ask. 

But they didn't. 

"Viv, I want you and Samantha at O'Reilly's, talk to the boss, the customers, coworkers, get to know her. Martin, I want you checking out her bank account, financial records, anything that might indicate she would've wanted to disappear. Danny, we're going to her apartment, talk to the neighbor." 

* 

The neighbor, as it turned out, was a real genius. Couldn't understand how a guy like this could end up in such a low-end apartment building, feeling out his life instead of using his intellectual talents to pursue a career in business, perhaps. 

"Look, man, I don' really talk ta 'er, ya know? She just -- she just come and go, like that. Whateva', right? She just usually come home around one in the mornin', she didn' last night, didn' come home. I call her work, says she left and all, but she not here, right? What you gonna do?" 

He leaned against his wall, his bony, pale, white arms pulling a slow drag from his mouth as he rubbed his free hand periodically against his left eye. There were dark circles beneath the eyes, both bloodshot. The slim body of a coke addict, the needle marks of a heroin user. Danny and Jack agreed without even looking at each other that what they had here was just a stellar witness, the best they could ask for. 

Oh yeah, you couldn't get better than this. 

Right, man. Whatever. 

Jack coughed a laugh into his fist, flipped his notebook open. 

"Well, that was nice of you to call, see where she was." 

"Sure, yeah." 

"You say you called this morning around nine, they said she had left at two in the morning, and she still wasn't home?" 

"That's what I say, yeah." 

"And what time did you report her missing?" 

"Oh, 'bout one, I say. Figured I better. If nothin's wrong, well, that's your job, ain't it?" 

"Sure is, " Danny said. 

They both stood, Jack folding his notebook back into his trenchcoat, reaching out to shake the drug case's clammy hand. 

"Well, if we find anything, we'll be sure to let you know, Mr. Anelson." 

"Right, sure. She's alright, you know? Brings me beer sometimes." 

Jack nodded. 

Beer and friendship. What a standout guy. 

* 

Sandy Granson had been missing fifteen hours and the leads were coming up shallow. She didn't have any ties to where she'd been, no real reason to stay, but no real reason to leave either. 

So just as Vivian and Samantha walked in from finishing up their questioning with a former employer, Jack got the call. 

Sandy Granson had been found in an alley about ten blocks away from O'Reilly's. And just as they'd started the case, there it had ended. With no real suspects, no probable cause of anything, it was undoubtedly one of the stranger cases they'd dealt with. 

"Just unlucky one night walking home. It happens. If the boys in blue want to take it further, it's their case now, " Jack said to his team as they collectively stood around the conference table or at their desks. 

Jack looked at his watch. It was nearly nine o'clock. 

"All right, not a lot of paperwork for this one. Let's wrap it up and head out of here." 

* 

They had closed up and Samantha had left before him, heading, as he figured, home. Last night, he had gone to Church. Tonight, he felt like going to her. 

Find your faith, he had been told. 

Find your faith. 

How do you do that? How do you just find something intangible? You can't see love, can't touch it as something solid and whole. You can't find something you can't see. Isn't that right? Isn't that what he'd learned all these years, finding people, finding missing people. If you can't see them, you can't find them. 

If you can't see them, how can they be real? 

Maybe he could only feel it. If he felt it, then it was there. And how would he feel it? How would he know the second it started being real to him again? 

He walked to the door of her apartment, heard her on the other side with Martin, talking and laughing so casually, so comfortably with one another. He didn't have to look to see that comfort. The comfort they had once had...almost two years ago. Two years and time had aged, not so gracefully, a period of his life he still hadn't decided was the worst thing that he could've done or the best. 

The television was turned on, not so loud, and he could hear her trying to cook. Maybe that chicken casserole her mom had taught her to make; the one she'd made for Jack one night, one night when they tried to pretend what it was like if they could really be together, if they could really be Jack and Sam. 

He wanted to knock and walk in and take her away from this apartment, this city with its lies, this life with its pain. He wanted to raise her above the ugliness of the world, the ugliness of his own mistakes, and decide on something for once in his life. He wanted to make a choice once, just once, that he could live with. He wanted to make a choice that he could sleep with at night. 

He thought he had, but he wasn't sleeping any better with Maria. 

Jack's hand hovered above the door, waiting to knock. So maybe he still wanted her, maybe he did. But maybe she had stopped waiting like a demure little lover, hoping her king, her prince, would come back. He couldn't, in honesty, have expected her to wait that long, could he? And yet, he had hoped maybe they would both find themselves waiting for each other, each apart but together in that need. 

It didn't sound that way now and he thought of all the lies he'd waded through in this line of work, the lies that built upon each other, one after the other until the framework unraveled and you had this horrible wreckage of a life, or lives, things falling apart left and right. 

Most of the time, lies were the things that destroyed you. 

He would've been happy, just for tonight, if Samantha stepped outside, pulled him in softly by the hand, lied to him and lied to him until they weren't lies anymore. He would've been happy to hear her say she hadn't moved on, she hadn't started this thing with Martin, that she had wanted him all along. 

Tonight, he would've been her bright fool. 

Deceive me, he thought. Deceive me tonight with a faithless whisper and I can sleep for a few hours. 

Lie to me. 

Lie to me. 

I'm getting so damn tired of being awake. 


	8. Saints and Sinners

**Chapter 8: Saints and Sinners**

Danny had his secrets, his secret places and names. Danny Taylor hadn't always been Danny Taylor. Vivian knew that, the rest of the team, he suspected, knew it as well, but they hadn't asked. 

So here he was, in a bar with Samantha, watching her nurse her third glass of scotch, and waiting for her to ask because she'd been wanting to, he knew she had. She had that look in her eye people got when they were waiting for a great revelation. 

Knowing this, he saved her the trouble. 

"My real name was Garcia, Daniel Garcia. My dad grew up in Spanish Harlem, my mom in the Bronx. They met, they -- whatever, fell in love, and here I am." 

Samantha watched him for a minute, took another sip of scotch. 

"You're sitting here sober and you've got the bitterness of a drunk, Danny." 

He laughed, rubbed at his face, and felt grateful for the generally subdued atmosphere at this time of night. 

"You've got a thing about drinking, Danny..." 

There it was, the one. The one question he'd been waiting years for, wondering if it would ever come. He'd known it would someday, known it so instinctively, in fact, that he had an entire speech planned out for it. For some reason, the words fell away just now. 

"Yeah...yeah, I do, I just, uh, guess I always -- guess I never wanted to get near it because of my father." 

"Drinker?" 

He nodded, rubbing his left hand over his knuckles. 

"Mine too, pal. A drink, " she said, "to our ace fathers and their addiction." 

She turned the glass around in her hands, watched the liquid dance against the sides and wait for it to tell her stories, to tell her what about it made their fathers drink it so much they couldn't see straight day after day. She waited for it to tell her why it had to exist and destroy families and make people hate themselves for this poison they needed. 

The answers, apparently, didn't come. 

"Kind of an ironic toast, don't you think, Dan?" 

She hadn't drank in a while, he could tell. A few shots, and she was already buzzed. Of course, the last time she did drink was about two years ago and he'd been with her then too. She drank over Annie Miller, and over Jack, and sometimes, she didn't remember the things she told Danny about Jack. About how much she loved him. 

Maybe she didn't even know how much she loved him, it was pushed so far back. One day, he wanted to tell her, one day, he wanted to ask Jack why he had done this to her -- made her love him and push her away. 

"Sam. My father was drinking the night of the accident." 

"Oh, shit, Danny. That just, that just sucks. God." 

She pushed the glass away, suddenly reviled by it and its toxicity, ran her hands through her hair so fiercely he thought she'd pull a few pieces clear out of the scalp. 

"My brother drank...pretty heavily when he came back from Vietnam. I think he hoped if he drank enough, the images might go away." 

"Did they?" 

"Shit, do they ever? You drink, they go away for a little while. You stop, they come back." 

He nodded, took a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the table, and popped them individually into his mouth. 

"You know what I think, Sam? I think the world just sucks sometimes." 

"I'll agree with that." 

She contemplated her drink again. 

"You think I shouldn't drink, Danny? Because of what I come from?" 

"No." 

"But what if --" 

"You're not an alcoholic, Samantha, believe me. Not even close, " he spoke gently, dropping the peanuts back into the bowl and leaning forward. 

"But sometimes, Danny, sometimes, " she said in a whisper, "I want the images to go away." 

"We all do." 

She nodded, her eyes darting down to the crumbs on the floor. 

"Sometimes I think it's in my blood." 

"What?" 

"This pain, " she said, laying her hand on her chest. 

The pain, he thought, was the pain he saw her wear on her face everyday like a benchmark to everything she'd been and done. A testament to her past and present and even future. The pain was the one that felt Jack and what he'd done, the one that felt every single case they'd lost and every single emotion of the ones they'd left behind. 

He knew this pain. They all did. And Jack -- he felt the pain of Samantha. He didn't have to say one single word, but Danny would always know where his heart would lay forever. Even if he himself didn't. 

"Sam, " Danny whispered back, putting a gentle hand on her arm, "I think we got screwed when we were kids, you know? But we're better than that now, look at us." 

"Yeah, " she said. 

"Yeah, " she said again, pulling her arm out from under Danny's grip and putting it on top of his now. 

The creak of hinges as the door opened behind them caught their attention and they both smiled at who it was. Matt, with his partner, spotted Samantha and Danny, waved, and joined them at the booth, Matt sitting next to Sam and Alexis taking a seat by Danny. 

"What brings you here?" Samantha asked casually. Her brother caught the look in her eye though, knew she was wondering why he'd be in a bar, wondering if the temptation was starting to eat at him. 

He shrugged though, scooped up a few peanuts. 

"We like the atmosphere. And -- it looks like we might have a serial killer on our hands." 

Danny and Samantha turned to each other, both eyes darting up. 

Alexis leaned forward, hands clasped around each other. 

"That case you guys just had -- Sandy Granson? She was the third victim. Matches each of the two previous victims in appearance. Death is always by gunshot, she was tortured for at least a few hours just like the second victim. And --" 

She stopped for a moment, gathering herself. 

"Sandy Granson had a 'U' carved in her chest." 

Samantha moved her eyes in confusion, questioning what the significance of that was. Matt turned to her, answering her question before she asked. 

"First vic had a 'Y', second vic had an 'O'. Now we've got a 'U' and three dead girls. No fingerprints yet, he didn't sexually assault any of them. He's good. Real good." 

"Too good?" Samantha asked, leaning forward on her elbows, wavering slightly from her buzz. 

"We'll see." 

* 

Tuesday, December 14 

She struck most people as the type of woman who kept a daily organizer, who wore conservative sweaters with her head to the ground in high school; the type of woman who had a 'What Would Jesus Do?' bracelet or bumper sticker attached to her car; who never left a dirty dish on the counter before bed, never let her husband leave for work before ironing his suit, his tie, even his socks. 

Stephanie Meslin was the type of woman who kept her life in order, kept her house completely organized, and always had a smile in excess supply for family, friends, and total strangers. So it never occurred to people why anyone would want to hurt this woman who only invited the warmest of human emotions just by being, simply, Stephanie. 

Sometimes, the smallest incongruencies tilted the entire axis of our lives. Stephanie Meslin wouldn't know until much later, perhaps too much later, that if she'd waited to have that bowl of cereal until tomorrow so her husband could get a fresh gallon of milk on his way home from work, she wouldn't have endured what she had. If she had waited, waited just one day, she could've seen the movie they'd been planning for all week; she could've taken that trip to Lake Tahoe in the spring; she could've felt his fingers on her skin once more. 

If only...if only she'd waited. 

Sometimes, it was the smallest of things that changed our lives. 

The smallest of details that could kill us. 

* 

"Can you just be honest with me, please? If she's dead, I'm going to find out soon. I'd rather -- I'd rather know now so I can...so I can stop waiting for her to come home, " Patrick Meslin spoke, rhythmically clenching and unclenching his hands. 

"Mr. Meslin --" Samantha began. 

"Please, " he pleaded, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. 

Truth was, Stephanie had been gone for 36 hours and, according to Matt, matched the previous victim's descriptions. It could be coincidence. It really could be, she kept telling herself. But with each passing hour, the doubt started taking over her certainty. 

Her cell phone rang and she apologetically glanced to Mr. Meslin, stood and moved to a quiet corner, spoke quietly into the mouthpiece. 

"Spade. Oh, God. Yeah. All right, Viv. Thanks." 

She closed the phone slowly, watched the earpiece fold into the mouthpiece and pondered how quickly that conversation had just ended a life. She had never been the one to deliver this kind of news before, had never felt this tremor in her legs. How could you look in someone's eyes, watch the change from an impassioned kind of hope -- a hope shrouded in skepticism, but one that lay on the foundations of believing everything might be okay -- to one of emptiness, the look of everything being utterly lost that had once been all there was. 

With one life, so went another. 

"Mr. Meslin..." 

He got this funny, painful, awkwardly twisted smile. It fluctuated up and down for a few seconds, trying to decide whether to show her he was grateful for what they had tried to do or merely say, To hell with it, I'm done with this world. 

He settled for walking away and falling against the doorway to his kitchen, not trusting himself to take another step. That's where she left him a few minutes later and that's where he would remain for the rest of his life. 

In that same spot. 

Pained from his loss, unable to move, unable to even comprehend moving. Unable to understood why he should move anymore. 

That's where Patrick Meslin's life ended; ten blocks away from the grocery store his wife had been going to; six blocks away from her disfigured body lying in an alley off 86th. Six blocks from home and each would never leave the last place they had lived. 

* 

It seemed odd to put such opposites together in a phrase by saying saints and sinners. He heard it a lot, in songs and movies, heard of the saints and the sinners and the people who talked about them like they knew what they were saying. 

Saints were Saints for a reason, for their good works, their faith; and yet, it seemed, they scarcely were remembered by name, rather, by title. They were simply known as Saints and their each individual offerings fell all together in that generalization. The sinners, he mused, were more widely known and often called by name in daily life. 

We remembered the Saints, but we knew the sinners by name. 

So he started thinking about this as he found himself in St. Germaine's again. Started trying to remember the Saints he'd learned about and their feast days and the prayers he could say to make these sins go away. 

There was St. Matthew who wrote the first gospel; the Patron Saint of bankers. 

St. Thomas Aquinas; Patron Saint of students and universities. 

St. Monica; Patron Saint of wives and abuse victims. 

St. Christopher...he'd always liked St. Christopher, liked the legend behind him. The story of a young man crossing a river, stopped by a little boy asking to be carried across. When St. Christopher picked him up, there was an unbelievable weight atop him. The legend went that the boy was Christ carrying the weight of the world. So St. Christopher was the Patron Saint of travelers. 

He liked it, liked him, liked the legend, and he didn't know why. Maybe because he could feel that weight sometimes, sometimes almost everyday, and maybe if he prayed enough, St. Christopher would carry him too. 

He knew his sinners too, knew his own heart to be amongst that crowd. 

Sinners, sinners... 

Jack. 

Jack Malone. 

And here he was, a sinner, just a faceless sinner with a name people knew because he was just that; a sinner amongst Saints. Here he was in this church, praying to God and all the Saints that would listen to make sense of what he'd created for himself here. 


	9. A Thousand Points of Light

**Chapter 9: A Thousand Points of Light**

**Wednesday, December 16, 2003**

She had nothing to lose with Jack, aside from her job. She wasn't attached by flimsy legalities to a marriage that had stopped being a marriage and become simply a conversation filler at boring parties. She wasn't attached with children or tied to an exceptionally posh social circle that would shun her sin. She had never allowed herself to be more than her name until she'd come here and met him. 

When they started, it was a purely physical intimacy, supported solely by the passions they ignited in each other, to each other. When they started, they promised not to say each other's names, to call out the other in a moment that would pass and they would shrug off like dirty laundry, fix their clothes, and pretend nothing had happened. 

But he said her name once, said it in a way she thought she could get used to hearing all her life. He said it in a way that made her believe this could mean something and she was lost to him. 

When they started, she had nothing to lose. 

When they ended, she had a face and a name that could never be hers. 

* 

There were a thousand different ways to hate what had been done to you. You could point your finger at little inconsistencies in your third year of life, your eighth, fifteenth, and so on. You could blame your parents and the arsenic that consumed them, that moved onto you; blame your mother for leaving and promising things she knew she couldn't keep. You could blame your second grade teacher for telling you you were too slow for this, too dumb for that. 

You could blame your first enemies and your first loves and the way they both, in the end, left you feeling inadequate and incomplete. You could blame all these things for your life so far, but the truth was, they were going to happen, they had to happen. 

Jack shut his eyes, tapped his pencil against his keyboard. 

There were a thousand different ways to hate these things, and maybe, he thought, he'd gotten through a hundred so far. 

A thousand different ways to hate and one way, just one way to love. 

And that was plainly, very simply, forgetting everything else. Forgetting mortgage payments, car insurance, work and religion and politics and all the bureaucratic bullshit that defined most people's barest functions. You had to forget all these things and fall completely into the one thing, the only thing that meant something. 

You had to fall fast and hard and not look back; be free of earthly burdens, and find your spark, your hope, your faith. 

A thousand ways to hate. 

A thousand places of darkness. 

You had to love. 

A thousand points of light and maybe you could make it. 

"Jack?" 

Samantha poked her head in, halfway into his office. Samantha -- his thousand points of light. There she was. So close, but too far away now to ever be reached. 

"We got a new case." 

* 

You learned to detach yourself from this, you had to. If you didn't, it would consume you, case by case. He'd seen what it had done to the old war horses. The ones like Miller and Feldmen; the ones who had written papers on profiling techniques, on the psychology and motives of some of the worst serial killers they had experienced; on the sociology of ones who had become so numb to human suffering they killed because they were bored. 

These were the detectives he had idolized when he'd started. When he'd met Miller once a year ago for advice on a case, he was this foreign entity, remiscent of a person you might see working a grunt security job at posh penthouses for rich snobs who made more in one day than he did in five years. 

He had the eyes of someone who had seen too much and been too much, and held a knowledge of the world most educated people spent years in classrooms and books trying to figure out. He had spent 20 years on the streets of New York and become the last bit of empty you really could be before dying. 

Matt wondered how it happened, how a man like Miller had been taken over completely by his work and realized maybe it didn't happen on a conscious level, maybe one day he just woke up and saw all the things he had pushed back after each case. Push it back, push it back. 

It doesn't hurt if you push it back. 

It doesn't hurt. Until, that is, it finally does. Until you can't keep the vault locked and there you are, a bruised Saint who once might have been a cocky detective out to change the world. There you were, Pope of the lost. Looking around for where you used to be, hoping someone might remember who you could've been. 

So here he was, staring down the fourth victim in the cold, clinical back room of the city morgue, wondering for the hundreth time how you got the smell out of your mind; the smell of fresh death and imminent dirt piled on coffins that smelled of wood smoke and tarnished dreams. The last real place you could be who you were. 

He heard her before she spoke, had memorized the click of her heels and swish of her clothing. She raised the flaps of her coat, brushed off the rain, shook her wet hair, and stood beside him as she sighed. 

"You've got your bodies, partner." 

"Yeah, " he sighed back. 

"Forensics came back, still no trace of semen, no sexual assault, no fingerprints. Gloved when he beat her." 

He turned away from the body, settled on the safe face of Alex, her soft features muted in the half-light, but calming, nonetheless. She felt good to look at. She felt right. 

"He's got to mess up soon. It always happens. They make one little mistake, and that's when we get them." 

She nodded, folding the lab results underneath her arm. 

"Lt. Marro is pulling some more cops in on this, people are getting crazy, you know, serial killer on the loose. People want this guy caught just as much as we do. He wants us at his office in ten minutes." 

"Bad or good?" 

She shrugged. 

"I'll take him over this any day. God. We need to get this guy, Matt." 

"We will." 

She rubbed her brow absently. 

"What's he telling us? We've got 'You' from the three previous victims and we've got an 'all' from Stephanie Meslin. Why carve three letters in one girl?" 

"Getting restless." 

"And what's he saying? 'You all'...You all what?" 

"Lex, " he spoke, laying a hand on her shoulder, "let's go see Lieu and we can dissect this later." 

* 

She thought it ironic she had been the one placing his photograph on the white board. No one else would know why because it was a blemish on her past she kept with the other things she wanted to hide. A secret marker, but ironic nonetheless. This man, the man they were now assigned to find, had once been the cause of many sleepless nights, lying awake waiting for him to do something, to hurt her in some way. 

And now, she had to find him. 

She didn't want anyone knowing, but sooner or later, she knew, someone would find out. Taking a seat close to where Jack stood, she leaned against her chair for invisible support and waited to hear a name she already knew. A name she sometimes still heard like a monster in her dreams. 

"Vincent Marro, missing since last night. He was supposed to meet his brother for dinner, never showed up, brother called it in. Now, uh, his brother, Joseph, is Lieutenant over at the 52nd Precinct, and, I used to work with the guy, so we need to do this right, I don't want him stepping on our toes about improper procedures and other BS." 

"You guys rivals, Jack?" Danny smirked. 

"You could say that, " Jack replied, half-smile on his face. 

"Also, Vincent's a detective himself with the 60th, so Danny, I want you over there, talk to his coworkers, get some background on him and the cases he worked, see if there's anyone who could be holding a grudge. Martin, I want you and Viv at the guy's apartment, get a feel for the guy at home. Samantha, you and I are heading over to talk to the brother." 

Certain that he'd made a good decision in keeping her from Martin, if only to forestall what could be an imminent conflict of interest (God, did he feel like a hypocrite), but wavering on whether she would've been better off with himself, he decided to screw his indecision and get to work. 

* 

He couldn't put his finger on what grated him about this guy, but he knew only that the man rubbed him wrong, plain and simple. Joseph Marro had moved up from the man he'd known five years ago, but he hadn't humbled or gained any sort of wisdom you might imagine a person of power to have. Oppositely, he became the truest definition of a person in power and that was, absolute power corrupted absolutely. 

Maybe he was exaggerating that, but there was a barren type of emotion in the man's eyes, a loss of something human that he'd seen in the picture of his brother as well and he wondered, not for the first time, how a guy like this was on the side of the law. 

In fact, Joseph never liked Jack much either, so they both maintained a nice, simmering rivalry, though Joseph's dislike bordered on hatred. That little tidbit, however, remained unknown to Jack. 

So here they were, both putting on their amicable facades for the other, so perfectly executed they perhaps should've been auditioning for bit parts in Hollywood. Jack extended his hand first, caught the look Joseph shot Samantha, and dropped his hand, masking his slight confusion. 

"Nice to see you again, Jack." 

"You too, Joe." 

Oh, the lies we could tell. 

"Too bad it couldn't have been under better circumstances." 

He played the part of a grieving brother very well. Step up from a bit part now, Joe could very well land a spot in a Lifetime movie. 

"Yeah. Well, we'll have to ask some questions, of course." 

"Of course." 

"Procedure, Joe, " he said, hoping to allay any implications that they were focusing on Joe as a suspect. For his part, though, Jack wasn't entirely convinced Joe wasn't involved somehow. 

You just got that feeling from the guy. 

"I understand, Jack, no hard feelings." 

Joe moved aside, gestured to the two empty chairs by his desk for Jack and Samantha to sit, and took his assigned chair as well, pulled it close to the desk. 

"So, you say you were meeting for dinner?" 

"That's right. We were meeting at Unity Restaurant down by Battery Park on South End Avenue." 

"What time were you planning to meet?" 

"Seven. He was supposed to be there before me, but he wasn't when I got there, figured maybe he was stuck in traffic. An hour goes by, not a word from him, I'm getting worried. Couple of hours later, still no answer. And here we are." 

Jack nodded. 

"Anything out of the ordinary going on with him? Some unusual case, maybe?" 

"Nothing I can think of." 

"All right, Joe. We'll be in touch." 

They shook hands again and again, there was this feeling that maybe Joe was capable of something he hadn't thought him capable of before. Capable, perhaps, of murdering his brother. But that angle was wide open, considering they didn't even have a body yet. 

* 

She was fidgeting in her seat; so slightly, it would be unseen to the outside observer. But when you're partners, truly effective ones anyway, you find yourself picking up on little nuances like that. He was used to seeing her trenchcoat habitually wrinkled, not because she didn't care to iron it now and then, but because she honestly didn't think of it most days. 

She was that devoted and they understood each other because of it. He knew as much about Alexis as a person could know without being that person altogether. Without her, the job would seem menial somehow. He needed her around to temper belligerent witnesses, bounce theories off of, roll eyes with at the seemingly innate stupidity of most of the people they came in contact with. 

So here they were, staring down Lieutenant Marro whose already fired-up temper had risen to record heights with the worry, guilt, and frustration he was undoubtedly feeling. The pressure and stress, not surprisingly, was wearing on him. Unfortunately, they sat bearing the brunt of that frustration. 

Matt glanced at his watch covertly, quickly caught a spot on the far wall to avert his eyes to without seeming as though he had frankly had enough here. Which he had. 

His partner continued to fidget and he knew something was bothering her, something she hadn't told him, and now, that bothered him. 

"I don't have to remind you two how serious this case is. And now with my brother -- Jesus, just close this case, all right?" 

Obviously, the serial murders would be taxing on him seeing as he sat behind a desk all day and perhaps, through osmosis, saw the mutilations they had seen. Undoubtedly hard on him. 

"Yes, sir, we'll have this closed within the week." 

"All right, you're dismissed." 

It seemed to be a wasted visit, in Matt's mind, but they stood, hands in their pockets, and left as quickly as they could. Alexis moved out of the building quickly and he could've sworn he saw her shoulders moving in apparent distress. 

So he did the only thing he could do: he followed her. 

* 

Her legs bent halfway against the wall as she slid to the ground in a slow descent, not bothering to take off her coat, dropping her keys on the floor next to her as she finally touched the cool ground beneath. 

She thought of her partner because they seemed to be the only two people in the world on nights like these, nights when her father couldn't stay in that closet she had locked him into when her childhood ended. 

She thought of Matt and wanted him here because he was safe and warm and somehow, there he was, the key she'd given him turning in her lock. 

"Lex?" 

He called to the darkness. And though she wanted his strong arms around her, she was tempted for a moment to remain cloaked in the shadows without saying a word. 

"Matt." 

He followed her voice and knelt beside her, brushing a hand down the side of her head. 

"Your dad ever hit you, Matt?" 

He sighed, continuing to stroke her hair. 

"No. Yours?" 

He could feel her nod and he sighed again, this time with disgust. 

"Only once, though. Right before he left. Used to hit my mom sometimes, but most times, he wasn't even home. Hit me hard the night before he left, and then he was just gone. Great dad, you know? Right up there with yours." 

She laughed bitterly and yet, he felt a satisfaction that she had finally shared this part of herself with him. 

"We all got fucked, Lex. We all did." 

"I won't argue with that." 

"Why are you thinking about this now?" 

She was quiet for a moment, then spoke again and he could feel the tears on her skin. 

"My mom died. Just got a call from her nursing home. She died there, alone. And now -- now I'm...I'm alone, Matt." 

She fell against him, no wailing sobs or cries, just a few stray tears and muted breath and there they were, two lonely people. 

"Not tonight, Lex, " he said, and pulled her closer. 

A thousand points of light for all the lonely people thinking maybe...maybe life had somehow passed them by. 


	10. Whispers of Hallelujah

**Chapter 10: Whispers of Hallelujah**

The rain in New York was unforgiving. It stung your skin like daggers as it came down hard and fast, unrelenting and unmerciful. It blurred the street lights, the stars, the faces you saw everyday they were as familiar as the skyline. The strangers had faces and the friends had names and all you knew and you all saw became illusions in the cold, New York rain. 

"The whole damn world's a mess, Jack, the whole damn thing." 

Her hands were in her pockets, so deeply nestled inside he expected them to come out through an imaginary hole in the stitching. 

"Bitter much?" 

"If it's not one thing, it's another. Someone goes missing, you try and find them -- but you can't just find them, you have to _know_ them first and then you find out they had an affair or they were being abused or they were the abuser or they robbed someone or they fell out of a tree when they were ten." 

They stopped on the corner and she allowed her right hand to leave its cave as she passed off a dollar bill in exchange for a hot coffee that would burn her tongue and keep her warm for a few minutes, then grow stale and cold like the air and rain and she'd toss it into the trash can outside Morton's as they hit 56th. 

"A tree?" 

"A case a couple of years ago? Guy fell out of a tree when he was a kid, shattered his leg, it's never been the same. And now he blames the world for his limp, like we owe him something, so it's okay to hit his wife and kids and stop paying taxes. Something stupid like that, Jack. We'll find this guy, Vincent, and then -- then next we're going to walk in and someone else will be gone and I can't help but think -- are they going to be worth saving?" 

Her breath came in steady puffs as the air caught it and they danced under the city lights for a moment -- her breath and the air; under the lights of the city that burned at night with pain. 

"It's not for us to decide, " he offered, suddenly wondering where this cynicism was coming from. 

"Who does?" 

"It's not our job, Samantha. Our job is to find them. That's what we do." 

"I know, I know, it's not that -- it's...thousands of people out there are missing and...who decides who deserves to be found?" 

"I don't have the answers. Where is this coming from?" 

She didn't speak for a moment, took her last sip from the coffee, that, like he predicted, had lost its edge, and threw it away, tucking her hands once more into her pockets. 

"Little boy went missing three weeks ago upstate. We had a case at the time -- that rich bitch that faked her death so she could get more money for, who knows...her next makeover. Little boy and he didn't have a chance and maybe...maybe we could've been his chance but we were finding someone else who didn't give a damn that someone left this earth the night she decided more money was needed for that trip to Acapulco next summer." 

She stopped him, putting a hand on his chest. 

"Someone left this earth, Jack, that hadn't even been alive long enough to understand it. Some little boy who probably helped his mom bake Christmas cookies and wash dishes and --" 

She slumped against the brick wall and the look in her eyes troubled him more than he wanted to let on just then, but he reached out, touching her cold face with his equally cold hand, and drew back when he met tears. 

"It's not fair, Jack..." she whispered, a whisper he could hardly hear above the rain. 

"It never is, " he whispered back, and wondered if she even heard above the screams in her head. 

The rain teased their hair as it clung to the tendrils, dripping off drop by drop in a steady cadence as the angels cried with her, with him -- for a boy they'd never known and the ones they had. 

The rain in New York tasted like blood -- blood and ghosts. 

* 

"The first two victims were single with no family to speak of and low-paying, grunt jobs. The third victim was married, had a successful job as an accountant. I don't understand his pattern here, " Alexis spoke as she shuffled the casefiles on her lap. 

"There isn't one, " Matt replied, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the steering wheel. 

"All right, turn the car around, I'm going to curl into a ball for about a week and maybe I'll be enlightened." 

"Well-rested, maybe. You want the answers, we have to go out and get them." 

"Sometimes I hate this job, " she spoke with a mixture of bitter amusement and defeat. 

"Didn't anyone tell you? That's a prerequisite." 

* 

"Tell me you've got something." 

"I've got something." 

Alexis stared down the Medical Examiner whose face betrayed nothing, but whose voice said, You are still shit out of luck. 

"You don't." 

"I don't." 

Alexis rolled her eyes, crossed her arms. 

"Why do you do that to me?" 

"Makes me feel good. Hey, it got you grinning for two seconds, didn't it? I gotta be sarcastic as much as possible, you know, 'cause sometimes it gets really dead in here, " he said, wiggling his eyebrows at his own lame pun. 

Alexis nudged Matt with her crossed arms. 

"We've got a regular Groucho Marx here tucked away in the morgue. Next thing you know, the Knicks are going to lose the playoffs." 

An avid basketball fan, hopelessly enamored with the Knicks, his partner managed to remain blissfully unaware of the team's failures. 

"They already have, partner." 

"Damn." 

She dropped her arms. 

"So, you haven't gotten prints from any of the victims?" 

The Medical Examiner sighed, removed his gloves, and pulled the sheet up over the victim. 

"We've got an impartial print from Stephanie Meslin, but there's a lot of possible matches. Plus, you have to consider another possibility." 

"What's that?" 

"The hundreds of illegal immigrants in this city whose prints aren't even on file, " Matt said, finishing off the coroner's thoughts. 

"Exactly." 

* 

Not that you expected much from apartments in this part of Queens, just north of Hollis Court Boulevard; the part where you weren't sure walking in public, with a gun, at night was even safe, because they looked at you like they were sizing you up, determining how much you were worth and how many guys could take you down. 

And maybe they wouldn't kill you, or maybe just not right away. But that was Queens and you expected it. 

Now the Bronx -- the Bronx he wouldn't walk into even with a gun. He'd heard the hardened inner city cops, guys who grew up in Brooklyn and Alphabet City, talk about places they wouldn't go into, especially at night. And the Bronx was one of them. Maybe because they lived there and knew all too well what went on. 

Knowing all this, and hovering above the noisy din of distant sirens, blaring rap music, and switchblades popping in and out in intimidation, he ran a brief hand over the butt of his trusty, government-issued piece and relaxed. 

Standing in the apartment, he regarded how dumpy it was, even compared to the rest of the apartments on this block. A small fridge, barely, it looked, functioning, rested in the far corner of the room, by the window and kitchen counter. A few dirty socks were thrown over the microwave and a pile of laundry so high you had to pick your foot up at least three feet to step over it, sat in the middle of the living room. 

The pile at least seemed to have an organization to it; mildly dirty, dirty, and shirts he could swear were growing mold. 

Martin waited for the landlord to tuck his keys away and explain exactly why his building seemed incapable of heat on this chilly day in the city and why his own clothes resembled those of his tenant's. 

Apparently, he didn't care. Or he didn't know. Martin wouldn't put either notion past him. 

"So what can you tell us about Vincent Marro?" Vivian asked. 

Martin took the opportunity to do a cursory scan of the apartment, rested on a few folders he wanted to look into. 

"Vinny? Model tenant. Clean, quiet, always up on his payments." 

The clean part seemed like a stretch, but neither agent could vouch for the rest of that. 

"He talk to you much?" 

"Saw him off and on, we made the usual small talk about work, life in general. Just bullshit." 

"He talk to you about work a lot?" 

"Like I said, we weren't pals or nothin'. Says he likes his job, it's rewarding, yada, yada." 

"Do you know if he had any friends in the building that could help us?" 

"Check 4C, next door." 

"Thank you." 

The landlord turned to leave, wiped at some grease on his shirt, then turned back around. 

"You gonna know in a week or so if he's dead or not, 'cause I'm losing money on this room." 

Martin and Vivian looked at each other sardonically, unsurprised by his comment. 

"Uh, we'll let you know." 

He shrugged and left. 

"Nice guy." 

"If I died, you'd wait a few weeks before clearing off my desk, right Viv?" Martin remarked lightly. 

"I'd give you a month, Martin, " she smiled. 

"Thanks." 

* 

Beat cops, it seemed, were less inclined to help you, as though they were pressed for time and resources and maybe you should just hurry this up and leave. He wanted to put them in his place, just for a day, see how they made out. 

God, had he been like that once? Traffic vioations, parking citations; hard day's work. Danny waited patiently for the cop to come back from the copy room, watched him tuck his belt around his round stomach, and pretend he was tough. 

Boy, these guys could be intimidating. 

"So, what did you want to know?" 

"Vincent Marro -- you worked with him, right?" 

"Oh sure, sure. Didn't spend a lot of time with the guy, whatever, but yeah, talked stocks in the locker room now and then." 

"Yeah? How about that Dow, huh?" 

"Well, if I knew a damn thing about that stuff, I might be livin' in Greenwich right now, 'stead a picking my butt here." 

Danny chuckled. Sometimes he missed the overt crankiness these guys exuded everyday. 

"I hear you. Listen, have you seen Vincent's partner, uh, " Danny flipped a few pages over his notebook, searching for the name he'd written down, "Jeffrey Pesna?" 

The officer leaned forward on his elbows, tipped his hat forward to a friend, absently replied, "Wandering around here somewhere. Pretty swamped you know? Partner's missing. I think he's in near the interrogation room back there." He pointed his finger behind him. 

"Thank you." 

Danny tucked his notebook back into his coat, navigated his way through clicking computer keys, slamming locker doors, frustrated Jets fans, and perps getting hustled around for being just plain stupid, as usual. 

Familiar, that's how it was. Danny breathed in, smiled, watched an unruly suspect flinch away from a cop. This job had its rewards. 

* 

If he could compare it to something tangible, Jack would write the last few years of his marriage like a mournful ballad, one perhaps generally played for the dead, because, that's what it felt like. A death. Like life, like an enthusiastic sonata, his marriage began happily, emblazoned in perfection. 

The beginning of his marriage, the first few years of his children's lives, was like Handel's Hallelujah chorus. Then, it sort of just...broke. There were these faint chords now and then that were still perfect, like Hannah's first day of school, Kate's first pageant, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and birthdays. 

But he started forgetting the harmonies and solos, the rises and falls of each note. It became that ballad, like Toccata and Fugue, or a depressing piece from Tchaikovsky or Bach. 

The last year, especially, was the kind of ballad you would play in mournful remembrance of the dead. Dead. How ironic, he thought. He couldn't touch life anymore, felt trapped in the shadows of what had become this mediocrity. 

He was hoping, maybe, he could hear that chorus again. It had given Handel hope, given the people who heard it hope; hope and faith and...God, did he ever need those things. 

"Jack, " she spoke, beckoning him to bed. 

He crawled next to her, shivered against her cold hand. Christmas would be here soon, he couldn't leave her now. There never seemed to be a good time. 

"Bad case?" 

"Nah, pretty easy. Cop missing. I think the brother had something to do with it." 

"Does he have any family?" 

"No, alone in a little apartment in Queens." 

"Alone..." 

"Alone, " she said again, quietly, as though turning the word over in deep thought, thinking maybe they would be that way at some point in their lives. 

She ran a hand against his shoulder and he took it, held it, wondered why it didn't feel like home to him. How would it feel, he thought, to be alone? To come to the end of your life and reflect, digress on the things you should've done and be utterly alone with those shortcomings. Cold. It would be dark and cold and your life would be in shadows and you'd wonder...where was the happy ending? 

Maria wasn't stupid; very smart, in fact, and felt without him speaking, the great distance they still had between each other, the distance they perhaps couldn't overcome ever. So she smiled a smile he couldn't see and rolled over, left him alone with those thoughts in shadows. 

He lay there, thinking of the people who never felt love, not even once, their entire life. Maybe they were better for it, maybe worse. He started forgetting what love felt like. How was it supposed to feel? Were you supposed to wake up and remember that you didn't have to hurt anymore? 

Faith, he supposed. You had to have faith that you would feel it and know it and it wouldn't leave. So maybe he hadn't ever really felt love, not the kind you're supposed to feel anyway. 

He rolled over as well, and their cold backs touched each other, skin on skin and miles apart and he buried his head into his pillow against the mournful echoes of a decayed marriage. 

Jack heard whispers too. 

Whispers of Hallelujah. 

And he couldn't touch them, because they were places far away from here, embodied in a single soul he'd written away like a descrescendo. Where was his breath mark and half rest? His pause in life to find himself? 

He was lost. 

Lost in the whispers of Hallelujah he couldn't see and couldn't touch. 

Because whispers were just breaths we forgot to take. 

And Maria was the person he forgot to love. 


	11. Talk of Michaelangelo

**Chapter 11: Talk of Michaelangelo**

**Thursday, December 17, 2003**

Not that the case wasn't important, although, maybe it wasn't the most urgent one they'd ever worked on; in fact, more pressure was pressed upon them given that the person missing was one of their own -- a cop. She would have, in the past, considered it equally as important as any other case if it weren't for the fact that...Vincent Marro wasn't someone she could care about finding. 

Samantha bunched her hands together in her pockets, thought of the cases they wouldn't even get until this one was solved. She thought of what Jack had said about it being their job and how they needed to do it and it wasn't their place to say who would be saved. 

Who would be saved, though? 

In the end, didn't we all need it? 

And here she was, staring at the picture of a fifty-ish man whose hair was only slightly greasier than it had been five years ago. It had receded moderately, grown gray at the tips and around his ears. He still had the same pockmarks and craters from his boyish acne, still wore that same smile, the one that enticed strangers and made you think you could trust him, and you wanted to. 

She didn't like his smile. 

"Temperature's dropping." 

She turned around and caught Martin, his gaze already diverted from her back to the notes he'd taken in Queens yesterday. 

"They forecasting snow?" She asked, inclining her head playfully as she sauntered up beside him, read over his shoulder. 

He nodded. 

"Around six tonight. By tomorrow, we'll be covered." 

"I'll take both of you on in a snowball fight. Whoever beats me, you've got a free trip to Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas Symphony, " Danny said, coming in beside them. 

Samantha raised her eyebrows, lifted her hands up slightly in her pockets, and nudged Martin with her elbow. 

"Come on Martin, Danny's buying. You beat me, you got a date." 

Samantha leaned back minutely against Danny, felt his chest rumble with quiet laughter. Martin didn't look amused, but Danny continued the joke, wrapping a playful arm around Martin. 

"Come on honey, I'll even put in for some hot chocolate, we can get extra marshmallows..." 

He waved off Danny's arm. 

"All right, you keep this up, I won't even play. When are we going to find the time to do this anyway?" 

"We're getting a foot tonight, ten inches tomorrow night, and a good blanket this weekend. This case? We'll close it by Sunday. And Sunday? Game day, Martin. Bring your mittens." 

Martin smiled, pushed his notes hastily into the folder as he saw Jack come in. 

"I'll be there. And I'll wipe the cement with both of you, " he teased, pointing the tip of his folder purposefully in their faces as he followed Jack into his office. 

* 

"We talked to the landlord, he wasn't much help. Although, we did manage to gather that he was a good tenant, devoted to his work, and allegedly was one of the cleaner renters." 

"Allegedly?" Jack asked over his crossed hands. 

"Put it to you this way, the dirtiest Reggie's room has ever gotten is still cleaner than Vincent's apartment, " Vivian spoke as she entered behind Martin. 

Jack chuckled. 

"All right, you get anything else about this guy?" 

"No one really knew him, except for his neighbor, and the guy was out when we were there. We'll head back today, see if we can catch him." 

"All right, Danny's going to be questioning Vincent's partner, Jeffrey Pesna, so, let's see where we are after that." 

"What about you and Sam?" Martin inquired. 

Jack looked up sharply, felt a tug at Martin's usage of Samantha's nickname, the one he'd hoped was reserved for...anyone that wasn't Martin. God. He twisted his hands. He was acting like a jealous, hormonal teenager. He had to stop this. 

"We're looking at his old cases, see if there's anything they can tell us about him or who might be holding a grudge against him." 

Martin nodded, Vivian hung back for a moment, leaning closer to Jack. 

"Everything all right?" 

He held his face for a moment, then smiled quickly. 

"Fine. Good luck." 

They were done. 

* 

Maybe it was hypocritical to think it, but Danny wondered if there was an unwritten rule somewhere that detectives and Federal Agents had to wear black trenchcoats. True to form, Jeffrey Pesna, Homicide detective for the 60th Precinct, stood before him in a rumpled, black trenchcoat. 

He was muscular, built like a wrestler, or biker, if he was going to stereotype. At first glance, you might think he was just one of those cops who'd eaten too many doughnuts when he'd been pulling grunt work on the street and never lost the pounds when he moved up to Homicide. Standing closer, watching him move, you could tell he worked out, held it like a piece of art. 

Lord, the ladies must go nuts for him. Strikingly handsome, he had a boyish face, surprisingly unmarked yet by age or stress and his dirty blonde hair was stunningly messy. Geez, the guy could sleep for three days straight, roll out of bed, and probably still bring women to their knees. 

Cynically humorous, you wondered just how much pleasure he allowed himself behind those intense hazel eyes. 

"How long have you been working Homicide?" 

He seemed relaxed enough, made the decision to remain standing as though he knew already he wouldn't have much to offer about his partner. 

"Two years. Just transferred to the 60th about...I'd say six months ago, " he rolled an eye up in thought as he responded. 

"You been busy?" 

He shrugged. 

"Writing my memoirs." 

There it was. The Homicide detective humor; the kind that outsiders never quite found funny; the kind that only fellow detectives could really get...or fake they got. 

"Shit, " he spoke again, "it's New York, G-man, what the hell do you think?" 

Danny smiled for good measure. Okay, we'll play. Funny. 

"Tell me about some of your cases, " he said, pencil poised over his notepad. 

Jeffrey leaned against his desk, crossed one hand over the other and spread his shoulders against the wall behind him. 

"Off the top of my head, we had messy rapes, gang-bangings, fuckin' kids killin' kids. Jesus. You ever listen to Pink Floyd?" 

Danny shrugged. "Sure. Wrote some of _my_ memoirs to it." 

Jeffrey chuckled, scratched at his side. 

"Yeah, man. Great stuff. Anyway, that one album of theirs? Shit. You spend a day with me, see what I see? This, " he moved his arms apart around the perimeter of the station house, "this is the dark side of the moon. This place, this city, this whole god-damned world." 

"Yeah." 

Cynically humorous? The guy was damned hilarious. God. He was a freakin' poster child for detectives taking their cases too seriously, taking them home, hell, living and breathing them. And he did. Jeffrey Pesna lived his cases. Danny hadn't seen it at first, but there it was: the shattered glass in his eyes. 

"Any...unusual cases? Something that bothered you more than the rest? Something that might account for why your partner's gone missing?" 

"They all bother me, but we didn't work anything we've never worked before. Vinny seemed a little different the last week or so, like something was going on. He wouldn't tell me." 

"You have any idea what it might have been?" 

He rubbed a finger down his cheek in thought. 

"Tell you the truth, I think he was havin' money troubles. Not like I own a yacht workin' this job, none of us do, but uh...he was behind on some of his bills the last few months, his clothes were looking pretty bad, he was losing weight. Like I said, I asked him about it, he wouldn't tell me." 

"Were you guys friends or --" 

"I like Vinny, but we didn't get drinks after work or nothin' you know? We did our job, we went home. His brother can be pretty fuckin' psycho sometimes, I'll tell you that. And he's not my boss, thank God, so I can say it." 

"Psycho?" 

"Yeah, called Vinny for weird things sometimes, like, wantin' to know if he'd bought lightbulbs, wanted him to buy eggs for him once, always reminding him about dinner together, so on, so on. He borrowed money a lot too, I don't know what for. Which is weird, you know? I mean, fuck, he's a Lieutenant, what's he need to bum money off his shit-eating brother for? We're the poor ones here. Probably contributed to his money troubles." 

Jack's theory about Joseph's involvement in his brother's disappearance may not have been far off the mark. 

"All right. Anything else you can tell me, Detective Pesna?" 

He rolled his shoulders again, looked like he was itching for a cigarette or beer. 

"Not at the moment." 

"Okay, thank you. We'll be in touch." 

They shook hands and Danny folded his notepad up, scanned his notes quickly, making sure he had recorded all the important things. This was getting weirder by the minute. 

* 

"I think this job's hard sometimes, I can't imagine working Homicide. The people are already dead. Where's the happy ending?" 

Samantha inquired as she turned the pages of Vincent Marro's casefiles, cringed at some of the crime scene photos. 

Happy ending. 

There was that word again. 

After she'd been shot, there had been an estrangement between them, no doubt, but he still felt close to her, this connection he'd felt since she first came to work with him. But now it seemed, even with the passage of time, they had somehow grown even further apart. At least, that's how it felt to him. 

"The families get closure. It may not bring them back, but...it means something to the ones they left behind, Sam. It means a hell of a lot." 

Speaking from experience, she supposed. Not that he'd known anyone who had been murdered, but he'd told enough families enough times that the greatest effort had been put forth to save their loved one, but...it wasn't enough. Enough. Enough. Nothing ever seemed enough. 

"You were in the NYPD before you came here, Sam...what department did you work?" 

It startled him for a minute that he'd never asked, never known this part of her life. 

"I was just a street cop, Jack...well...yeah --" 

"What?" 

She wasn't sure if she wanted to go here with him. 

"I was a street cop for about two years, then transferred to Narcotics." 

"You worked Narc?" 

He seemed impressed for a moment, like a friend gawking at the other's high score on what could conceivably be the hardest test of the year. She liked the awe, relished it for a moment, and smiled. 

"Yeah, worked that for a couple of years, joined the Bureau, and here I am." 

He was quiet for a moment before his curiosity spiked again. 

"Who was your partner in Narcotics?" 

She swallowed hard, moved a strand of hair around her face so he didn't suspect she wasn't at all comfortable with this part of her past. 

"Oh, you know, I think -- no, I'm getting him confused with someone else. You know, I can see his face, I just can't remember the name." 

He didn't betray his suspicions that she was lying to him, he had more practice than her. He'd lied enough for both of them over the course of two years and he could hide it from her but see her own falseness. It bothered him. Why couldn't she tell him? 

"I take it you weren't chums then?" 

"Chums? No. We did sleep together a few times, though." 

She meant it as a joke, but it bothered him. Here he was, regretting the distance he'd allowed to come between them, hurt at her relationship with Martin, and now she was joking about something like this. Casual sex. Just casual. Is that how she viewed them? 

"That wasn't funny, Samantha." 

She unconsciously ran her finger over Vincent's hastily scrawled name on the fifth casefile she'd flipped through. Now, she was a little hurt. So she did the only thing she could think of: she hurt him back. 

"At least he wasn't my boss." 

Jack drew in a deep breath, drew the fingers of his left hand closer into a fist and blew the breath out slowly. 

Samantha regretted it the moment she said it, but didn't want to agonize over saying it in the first place just now. For no reason in particular, she looked up at the whiteboard, caught Vincent Marro's eyes. 

She didn't like that smile. 

* 

"Chinese takeout?" 

Danny tossed his keys onto Samantha's counter. She shrugged. 

"Didn't feel like cooking." 

He took off his coat, brushed away the few remaining snowflakes, and draped it over one of her chairs. Leaning heavily against the back of her couch, he sighed in frustration. 

"This case is going nowhere, Mona Lisa." 

She came towards him, crossed her left leg underneath her, leaned her right elbow against her couch and rested her head against her hand. 

"Mona Lisa?" 

"You've got that smile. Plus, I needed a new nickname for you." 

"Ah. Was Mona Lisa even smiling in that painting, Da Vinci?" 

He shrugged. 

"Was she? I don't know. I just like it." 

She was wearing an old NYPD sweatshirt, old, gray sweatpants, looked sad and tragic and beautifully muted in loneliness. Which meant, of course, something had happened with Jack. If he knew his best friend at all, he knew this: she was, and always would be, Jack's. And God, did that silent smile, the one that never came, break his heart. Just smile, Sam. Just smile. 

"You okay?" 

She turned her face into her hand for a moment and he waited. Would've waited days if she'd just tell him what was bothering her. When she turned back to him, there were tear tracks on her cheeks and he sighed again for the second time in less than five minutes. 

"Michaelangelo." 

"What?" 

"He painted some beautiful things, Danny. Spent years painting the Sistine Chapel and it...it was just so amazing. He was so dedicated. I wish -- I wish he could...paint something beautiful for me." 

He smiled, smiled for her, and reached forward to pull her against him. 

"Michaelangelo, " he said, "well...he'd paint you a love." 

"And what would it look like?" She asked, her question muffled against his shirt. 

Jack, he wanted to say. It would look like Jack. 

"Home." 

And then Michaelangelo, the magic artist with mysticism, enchantment, and beauty in his fingers -- he'd paint something real. 

He'd paint her a smile. 


	12. Alone in a Crowd

**Chapter 12: Alone in a Crowd**

**Friday, December 17, 2004**

Apartment 4C was only slightly smaller than the one adjacent to it, though Kenneth Mercel didn't seem to mind. He barely took up the space he had and the apartment, from the looks of it anyway, couldn't really be categorized as a place for living so much as a rest stop, really. 

He seemed to be out of it more than he was in it and from the semi-clean sheets, the few clean things in this place, that much was obvious. 

Martin and Vivian had come back here for a second time yesterday, searching for the guy and he still hadn't been here. Now, here they were again. 

Martin was starting to hate Queens and though he could've easily gotten an apartment here, given that the rates were cheaper than in Manhattan, and that he was less than twenty minutes from the FBI field office, he couldn't be happier that he had made the decision to settle into his humble little apartment in the Lower East Side. Queens, he mused, wasn't for people who were born and raised amidst the kiddy crimes of rural Washington. 

Vivian, on the other hand, wasn't fazed a bit. They could traipse around every little street and neighborhood from here to Brooklyn to Bed-Stuy, Washington Heights, Harlem and on back to Manhattan and she would remain as she was right now because Vivian...Vivian was a New Yorker. She had it in her blood and he counted himself lucky again that he was with her right now instead of by himself, though he'd never voice that to anyone. 

Kenneth was ready to leave again, it seemed, as he tossed a few packs of smokes in his pocket, rolled up some money and stuffed it in the pocket below the small hole in his shirt. There were numerous rips in the guy's shirt, like he'd been in a few fights with it. If he looked closely, he could see fresh cuts as well. 

"Been in a few fights lately, Kenneth?" 

Slapping the sides of his jean pockets to make sure he was packed, he finally turned his attention back to Martin and Vivian, cringed at the name. 

"Kenneth? Nah, man, shit. I hate that name. Fuckin' hate it. Crack head ma names me that, man, not me, not me. I hate it. You call me Ken or Kenny. I don't wanna 'ear no fuckin' 'Kenneth'." 

Martin held out his hands in casual compliance. 

"Sure. So, Kenny, been in any fights?" 

"Nah, I cut holes in my shirts for fun." 

Everyone's a comedian. 

"Sure I been fightin' now and then. People try to take my stuff, I gotta get it back." 

Martin and Vivian exchanged a look. 

"Stuff?" Vivian asked. 

Ken waved his pointer finger back and forth. 

"I don't tell my secrets." 

"Drugs?" 

"Maybe." 

Martin sighed. 

"All right, look, Ken, we're not concerned with what you do on the street with your 'stuff', we just want to know anything you can tell us about Vincent Marro." 

"Vin? Vinny. Yeah, crazy cat, but great guy, you know? We got some beers now and then when he had off, he didn't bother me about my...stuff." 

A cop living next door to a junkie who doesn't do anything about the junkie. Strike one, Vincent Marro. 

"He's been missing for a day now, you have any idea where he might be?" Vivian asked, waving her pen mildly in the air. 

Ken stumbled against the table for a minute, sniffed and rubbed at his nose furiously. 

"The hell should I know? I look like his ma? I didn' see the guy for a couple of days anyway, and now he's missing. Who knows? He could be dead somewhere." 

"Do you think he's dead?" 

"Again, how the hell should I know? He's a cop. Lotta people around here aren't exactly linin' up for autographs when the boys in blue drive by. Could be anybody, could be nobody. Maybe he just wanted out?" He shrugged. 

It made a sense of sorts. Neither Martin nor Vivian could argue that they hadn't felt, even once, for the briefest of moments, the need to get away from this job and its pain. 

"Listen, can I go?" 

He moved his leg up and down like a little boy begging to ride that scary roller coaster he'd been dying to get on since last year. Vivian nodded. 

"Let yourselves out." 

With that, he was gone. 

Martin stood up and Vivian followed suit, ran her hand idly along the lampshade. 

"He seem a little too complacent to you?" She asked. 

He shrugged. 

"He could've been or we could be reading too much into it. You think he would have any reason to get rid of this guy?" 

"Lots of reasons, Martin. The guy's doing drugs, he's living next door to a cop. He tells us Vincent doesn't care about the drugs he's doing, that could be a lie." 

Martin nodded in agreement now. 

"Vincent could've stumbled onto some major drug trafficking around here, some dirty things. Pretty easy to bust people up." 

"He was a Homicide detective though --" 

"Still a cop --" 

"--so maybe this guy Ken was involved in a murder, they used to be pals, Vincent's gonna turn him in, they get to him first, " she finished. 

"Any murders around here in the last week or so?" 

Vivian stopped. 

"Three women in Manhattan, serial killer." 

"That's Manhattan." 

"We're fifteen minutes away here, no reason he couldn't live here and go there to kill someone." 

Martin stopped now too, turned to face Vivian. 

"And Ken did have cuts on his skin, fresh cuts." 

Vivian held up her finger. 

"Let's get back to the office, do a background check on our little Kenny." 

* 

When they arrived, Jack and Samantha were across from each other, papers strewn over the table with still more stacks of folders to look through on either side of them. Not even seven in the morning, and they both looked rundown like they'd been here all night. 

"You go home at all?" Martin asked Samantha as he took a seat next to her. 

She nodded. 

"Had some Chinese with Danny, talked to Matt, got a few hours. I couldn't sleep, so I came in early." 

Martin looked to Jack, asked him the question with his eyes. 

"Same thing." 

"Find anything?" Vivian asked as she sat next to Jack. 

"Not much. Most of his cases were solved, though. Hell, any of these people would have motive to hurt him if they got out. We're picking at straws." 

Vivian nodded, sighed. 

"Something about this case doesn't feel right, " Jack said, closing the folder before him and rubbing his hands over his eyes. 

Danny walked in, took a vacant seat next to Vivian. 

"We doing tax returns already?" He asked, knowing full well what they were doing and hoping to liven the mood, if only minutely. 

Jack gave him a wry smile. 

"You got anything good for us, Danny boy?" 

"His partner seems all right, he was being straight with me. I think he might know some things about Vincent that he's not telling me, though." 

"Such as?" 

"Nothing big, but, I get the feeling they didn't get along all that well and he won't say much about him. Didn't like his brother, Joe, though." 

Jack laughed bitterly. 

"Big surprise." 

"You really don't like the guy, " Martin remarked. 

"I think he dislikes me more than I dislike him." 

"Why?" 

He hesitated, felt Vivian's stare burning a hole into him. 

"We were partners a while ago. He uh -- he was cocky, brash. So was I, but...well, anyway, we were working together for a while and he was itching to get promoted, faked a couple signatures on his reports, even faked reports so he'd look good and I reported him and that was that. He was no-good, dirty." 

"So how'd he make Lieutenant?" 

Jack fanned his clasped hands out. 

"I don't know. I came here, he stayed there. Now his brother's missing." 

"Well, we have reason to think the neighbor might be involved, " Vivian said. 

"Run a background check?" 

"On it, " Martin spoke, already standing up and moving to his desk, now lost in his given task. 

Jack rubbed at his eyes again, moved his glasses up to free himself from the blurring words on paper. 

"All right, Viv, did you and Martin get a chance to check out Vincent's apartment?" 

"Not really. You want us to sweep it good?" 

"Yeah, bring forensics in, lift prints, hair, whatever you can find. If there's foul play, it might be right under our noses." 

Vivian stood. 

"Take Danny with you." 

* 

Vivian turned over papers and newspapers, lifted socks and shirts and brushed against walls. She'd picked up a lot of dust and grime, but nothing substantially pointing to anything out of the ordinary. 

Not much in the apartment would give away the fact that this guy had been a cop, which surprised her. Not that she flaunted her job at home, but there were little things she kept around, things that you'd notice if you saw them. Things like her certificate of graduation from Quantico, her badge thrown on the dresser at night when she came home. 

If she didn't know he was a cop, she'd walk into this apartment thinking he was just an ordinary guy living in Queens, scraping by on bills and rent and obviously in dire need of a washing machine. 

"I can't imagine what his desk looks like, " Danny remarked from the kitchen. Or rather, the little alcove not ten feet to her left that housed a mini fridge and microwave. 

"Agents!" came a shout from the bathroom. 

Vivian and Danny hurried over, looked over the shoulder of the CSI hunched over tiny blood drops. 

"Blood, " he said, as though they couldn't see it. 

"Anything else?" Danny asked. 

"We lifted a few prints. Nothing else. We'll get these back to the lab and see what we've got." 

* 

Jack took a break from the casefiles, wandered into his office and threw himself, more than eased into, his chair, plopping his glasses off in frustration. Lord, if this job didn't eat him alive sometimes. He saw the date on the calendar, noticed he had circled tomorrow in red. Therapy. Marriage counseling, to be exact. 

They'd been going for three months, three months of Gee, I didn't know that, Where did we go wrong?, What can we do?, and Look what we've become. 

Three months of it and he could've said all the things the therapist had said. In truth, he hadn't helped, just stated the obvious like he'd known would happen and what the hell were they still doing? Jack had been the one to suggest it, to throw one more weight from an already sinking ship. 

Maria had agreed and stuck with it and looked now like she didn't want to anymore. 

He picked up a red pen and crossed out the date. Whether they wanted to or not, they couldn't go, not with this case currently open. 

And somehow, he didn't think Maria would mind. 

Diverting his attention back to the case in point, he moved back to the conference room, noticed Martin's now vacant desk and inquired about it. 

"Went down to one of the stations to look up some more about the neighbor, " Samantha gave him without looking up. 

"Are we going to do this now?" He asked, bending over the table to meet her face, willing her to just look up. 

"What?" She asked innocently. 

"This. What you're doing right now. Ignoring me. Look, I --" 

She waved him off, grabbed her coat off the back of her chair. 

"Not here, we're not. I'm hungry, let's get something across the street." 

He conceded, grabbed his coat as well. She tucked her scarf tightly around her neck as they journeyed out and he followed her lead to the little diner, the one she'd gone to with Martin, though he didn't know it. 

They took a seat and she kept her coat on, ready for a quick escape, he supposed. 

"You're dating Martin, " he said. 

So there it was. It was out now -- why he'd seemed particularly distant to her, a little wary of Martin and her interaction with him. Like he was her big protector, like he had a right to undermine her choices. They were her choices, damnit, and he lost all right to have a say in her life the minute he chose to leave it. 

He chose it. That's what hurt her -- the fact that he had knowingly caused that hurt, had looked in her eyes, looked at her tears, looked at the love she was ready to give and said, Nope, you were good for a while, but sorry. 

And, God, did it hurt. 

"Not that it's any of your business, but no, I'm not dating him." 

"You're not?" 

"That's what I said, " she responded, her voice growing icier by the second. 

"And...it is my business, I'm your boss. If you were dating him --" 

"Oh no, you wouldn't even go there, Jack, you wouldn't even. Play the cards like some saint boss that keeps all his agents in line, but hey, it's okay if he gets a little something on the side." 

He drew in a deep breath, clenched his teeth. He deserved it, he knew he did. This had been building up for a year, since their abrupt end on the bench. 

"Sam, " he said, reaching over to cover her outstretched hand, "you were never 'a little something on the side', you know that." 

She pulled her hand away, looked down at her coat. 

"Do I? Or was I just a nice distraction for the few rough patches in your marriage? And now that everything's all fine and dandy with you two, you don't need need the sex on the side." 

"Sam! God, you weren't sex on the side, you weren't. You were more than that." 

He ran an angry hand around his hair, through the loose strands. 

"And we're not fine and dandy, Maria and I, we're not. We've been going to therapy and it's still not working." 

"Yeah? I went to therapy too Jack. For my gunshot wound. You know what kept me going for six fucking months? Huh, Jack? You know what it was? You. It was you. Took me six months in therapy to realize you were the one thing --" 

"The one what?" 

"Nothing. Not a godamned thing." 

She shot up out of her seat, tucked her hands back in her pockets and made a move to leave, but he caught her arm, looked at her with those disarming eyes. 

"What, Sam? What?" 

"The one thing I _couldn't_ get over, Jack. Ever, " she whispered, walked away before he could see the angry tears starting to pool in her eyes. 

He watched her leave, followed her stroll across the street and lost sight of her as she headed north. They hadn't even eaten. 

She walked with meaningful strides, not sure where she was going, but needing to get away from him and this stupid case for just a few minutes and be alone. And she was. She was alone. Always alone. 

The entire city moved around her; scattered couples laughing about stupid jokes or funny movies, couples walking hand in hand and wondering how life could get any better. There was this entire mass of people, this huge crowd of people with people, no one, as far as she could see, was alone. 

Yet here she was. 

Samantha Spade, agent at large, embodiment of pathetic choices and stupid chances and love she couldn't ever seem to get right. 

Here she was. 

Alone in a crowd. 


	13. Empty Things

**Chapter 13: Empty Things**

The rookie, he knew, got the brunt of a lot of flack, and, given the same circumstances, he couldn't say he wouldn't be just as dismissive and harsh with a newcomer as well. In fact, if they got a new person on their team just now, he'd probably act how most cops did. 

So he wasn't surprised when he'd first joined the team, knew from the start that it would take a while for them to warm up to him and even longer for them to be comfortable enough with him to call him a friend. And that was the thing; you worked with a lot of people as a cop, you didn't always, rarely even, get close. 

But he had. 

When he'd first joined the team, he'd read them all like a book. They didn't know it, maybe they still didn't, but Martin Fitzgerald was skilled at reading people just by looking at them. Not like most people who tended to stereotype based on looks and clothes and what kind of purse you had, the brand of shoes you wore. Even the way your hair fell around your head and what color it was. 

No, Martin could read a person and he was always 99% right. Except with Samantha. 

He got Jack right; first person he met, shook his hand. Tough guy. Big, Italian New Yorker with a crooked smile and dark eyes that he knew equally scared suspects and eased victims into whatever comfort he built for them. He wore the traditional suit and his eyes were what he expected: haunted, sad, unsure of what he'd done and been. And tired. Bone tired. A testament to his committment. And God, did the man have things running around in his head he just couldn't live down; demons. Demons in his soul. 

He got Danny right; cocky, a little, at first glance. And maybe that's where people dismissed him at first, with that initial meeting. But, the thing about Danny Taylor was, he was miles away from being cocky. Liked to play it up, sure, but he wasn't. He was humble and decent and he could see it in his eyes, this playful fire, this kindness, this readiness to help wherever and whenever he could. And this devotion to anyone he cared about enough to be his friend. Or anyone, he should say, that Danny let in. Because Martin could see that too, see that Danny had lost someone close to him, had fallen into cracks as a kid, had been unsure of where to go. So if he let you in, you were there forever. 

He got Vivian right; tough, that was his first word for her. Tough as nails, as the cliche went. A New Yorker too, her accent leaking through. Jack was the boss but Vivian...Vivian held them together. You could see it. The way she could look at Jack and con an answer out of him, not by sweet talk, but by brutal honesty and friendship. She had a dynamic with all of them and she contrasted Samantha perfectly, the other woman on the team. They were polar opposites, like north and south, but like the poles of a magnet, they also clung to each other. They could fight now and then, but they had an understanding together, like they knew something no one else ever would. 

He didn't get Samantha right. She was gorgeous, yeah. No doubt about that. And his heart thudded in his chest when he first saw her. Truth be told, though, he'd done it; he'd stereotyped her. He'd classified her, regrettably, as an agent that slept her way through the ranks and maybe it was because she seemed to be the flirty type, and hell, she was pretty, who wouldn't sleep with her? But she would've slapped him a mean one if she knew he'd thought that about her. Samantha Spade was the last person he'd ever accuse of that now. She valued her career too much for that. In some ways. And therein lay the conflict. See, he'd figured her for that kind of woman because of the way she looked at Jack and he looked at her like they were more than just coworkers. They looked like they were in love and that might've been okay, save for those nasty regulations, until he found out Jack was married and then the conflicts started, though Martin wasn't directly involved in this. 

He could only watch. 

And again, truth be told, he had fallen for her. He wouldn't protest anyone who called it lust or a simple schoolboy crush because maybe that's all it really was. But he did care for her and knew her now, after a year and a half, knew her pretty well and so now, knowing these things that he did about her, he could make his judgments about Samantha Spade. 

She was tainted, surely, but not with evil or the usual shortcomings you expect in certain people. She was tainted in the way you look at a person and think, My God, she's so good and real, and just so human. And she _was_ good, good except for Jack. She cared about her cases like they were her own, like she'd directly lost a person. She felt for the victims and thought about them long after they'd left most other people's minds. 

She carried them with her, though know one else thought much about it. 

And with Jack, he knew, she'd committed a sin, but here he stood, thinking of them after so long. Thinking of the way Jack's voice shook in a warm, abandoned movie theater as he looked across the street to the bookstore that held his agent hostage. Not just his agent, his meaning. Look at his eyes and you knew. 

So maybe Martin had a crush on Samantha and once or twice, months ago, they'd come close to taking it further when she'd been drunk and lonely and needing a warm body. And he'd held her and wanted her and thought of how it would feel to lay against her skin and those silky sheets of hers and hear her call out Jack's name without thinking. He didn't want it. And he knew it would happen, so he stayed the one thing he could be to her: a friend. 

Martin Fitzgerald, the boy next door; the All-American kid who keeps your tears in his shirts and your sad smiles in his eyes so you won't have to walk away with the pain you can't escape. He couldn't take her pain completely, but he could keep her company for a few hours here and there and make her forget and maybe that would be enough for those few hours, just those few hours where she could know she wasn't alone. 

God, he thought, the things you think about when you're sitting in a hard chair in a busy police station on a cold winter afternoon. He looked at his watch. It was almost three o'clock. He'd been waiting for ten minutes. Sheesh, how long did it take? 

Finally, the officer came back, tossed Martin a folder and said, "There you go. Not much, but the guy's been brought in on a few drug busts here and there, what have you." 

"Thanks, " he said, standing. 

Well, he'd broken his own stereotype. He'd come to Queens alone. 

* 

You expect the hours to pass by slowly when you've had a fight with someone and you're waiting for them to come back, hoping there will be a chance for forgiveness and redemption. But actually, it seemed to move so fast he couldn't keep track. 

Samantha must have come in and he hadn't noticed because once he left his office, there she was, poring over casefiles again. 

"We're not going to find anything, " he said, hands in his pockets as he leaned against his doorjamb. 

"You never know. Some cases are solved with the littlest details." 

"We need to hammer Joseph again. I've got a hunch he knows something." 

She stopped flipping the papers over. 

"Okay, " she said reluctanly. 

He nodded, though she couldn't see it. Well, this would be fun. 

* 

"The blood matches that of the neighbor, Kenneth Mercel. Fingerprints are Vincent's, " the CSI said as he sat with one leg on his stool, hand against his microscope. 

"What does that mean?" Danny mused aloud. 

"Agent Johnson, you mentioned that Kenneth Mercel had fresh cuts on his body?" 

She nodded. 

"Any simple or logical conclusion to that; he could've been in a fight, or he could've killed someone." 

"Not that we hope it's murder, but if he did Vincent, it'd make this case a hell of a lot easier, " Danny said, arms folded in concentration over his chest. 

"Your case, your call." 

They were silent for a moment. 

"And you didn't find anything else...skin, hair?" 

"All Vincent's." 

"Any possible connection to the serial murders Detectives Spade and Collins are handling?" Danny asked. 

"What do you mean?" 

"Well, have you recovered any blood from those victims, hair, fibers, skin?" 

"Nothing, the victim's are clean. ME got an impartial print off the last victim, but we've run it through. No match with Kenneth Mercel, if you think that's your guy." 

"He might not be the serial killer, but he could've killed Vincent Marro, " Vivian said and Danny nodded in agreement. 

"All right, thanks, " Danny said and they left. 

* 

Nighttime in winter remained one of the few trite symbolisms. Poets and writers always embellished the deepness of it, the intensity of it, the overwhelming darkness it lay over full towns and cities. And in the winter, it steadfastly remained one of the beautiful things as well, the stars of December shining brighter somehow than those of all the other months before it. 

Tonight, Jack didn't feel the enchanting detachment the gifted ones wrote about in their poems and novels. He just felt empty. Joseph Marro was conveniently unavailable tonight, so here they were, deadlocked. He wanted to cash this case in and move onto something they could feel. 

But he couldn't, given the circumstances. 

He'd called Maria and she'd been bitter at his admission, being unable to come home early. So she'd be going out on her own, found a babysitter for the girls. She needed time to think, as she put it. That was always good. Time to think. 

He had to do something. They couldn't carry on like this for much longer, they just couldn't. And yet, here he was, still holding on to something he thought could still be there. And he wasn't a quitter. He didn't want to be the one to finally end it, he just couldn't do it. 

Jack felt like another person, like he was living a lie with his wife. There were all these...empty things that looked like him and talked like him, but weren't him. He didn't know who he even was anymore. 

He just had these empty things. 

* 

Susan Goodly just wanted to get home. God, did she. Most of the time, work went by fast. She counted her blessings that she had a job safe from the tedium of so many career junkies in this city, the ones who felt lucky to get five hours of sleep at night, who forgot what time off felt like. 

She loved coming home to begin with, who wouldn't? But tonight was special. Tonight would be her anniversary. Waitressing at a diner in Queens wasn't what her guidance counselors in school would've promoted as the best thing to do after college, but she was in that transitional period; newly graduated, armed with a degree in History, waiting for a school, any school to hire her. 

It would come through, she knew it. 

Her friends would tell her she didn't belong here, she should move to a fancier place, away from the seediness this part of New York had to offer. But she could stay here from now, she could stay. 

Placing the decaf coffee back on the heater, she looked at the clock, obviously not conspicuously either, as she caught her friend Amber's knowing grin. Time to clock out. She threw her apron off, punched her time card in the slot and gathered her stuff in her tote bag. Throwing her hair into a quick ponytail and pulling a heavy sweatshirt over her head as she looked out the window at the falling snow, she zipped up her jeans quickly and pulled on an extra layer of socks. 

Dressed in record time. 

Back to the apartment in less than ten, she could be in her modest dress by eight, at the restaurant by eight thirty, and nursing a wam glass of Merlot by nine, wondering how she'd been lucky enough to find a guy like David. 

The last article of clothing was the cute Santa hat her friend Lynn had given her last Christmas. She pulled the warm wool over her ears, already felt the chill stinging her face and smiled in anticipation of it. It made you feel alive somehow. Cold. Cold as hell, yeah, but she would be warm and safe...and loved. Loved by David. 

Slinging her purse over shoulder, her tote bag across her chest, she waved a goodbye to Terry at the cash register as she left, smiled at the Christmas jingle the mat played when she stepped across it to leave, and walked from life forever. 

Two blocks later, she'd be nursing a grin again as she thought about what David might be wearing; the blue silk shirt he'd bought last week or maybe the green sweater with the white stitching across the top that she'd bought for his birthday. One of those tops and his new leather jacket. 

When you think about something, you get lost in that moment, in what's going to happen and where you're going to be, lose sight of where you are. That's what happened to Susan. She was wandering the streets of Queens, hands tucked deeply into her pockets, walking inside that warm restaurant in her mind, and suddenly, she was pulled out of that path into an alley, a hand covering her mouth. 

He took her hat off first, then her jacket, threw them in the trash. The cold wind was picking up and leaking through the tiny holes in stitching of the sweater she wore. He would rub her skin, but it would be as cold as the wind, colder even. 

He would take her in another room, taunt her for a few hours. And she would think of David, still think of him. No, he'd be wearing the red sweater. The blood red sweater. 

And then her blood would bleed into his sweater and she would forget what the Merlot tasted like, forget the feel of the wool hat against her skin, telling her she'd be warm now, warm always. She would be cold, very cold, in her last moments. And then...she was gone. 

* 

Oh, God, someone tell me I don't have to do this, she thought. Tell me. Please, tell me. Three in the morning, freezing her ass off, standing on a stoop in Queens. That's how this day would start. She knocked once more, her knuckles numb from the cold. Matt stood away from her, talking to the cops who had been on the scene. 

Open the door. Open it. She needed to do it -- needed to do it now. There had been very few times in her life that she'd been the one to deliver the bad news and now, here she was. Her third time. 

The door finally opened, the man rubbed at his eyes, his hair was matted to one side and he was wearing a green sweater with white stitching on the top. He hadn't even gotten changed, probably came home worried as hell, fell asleep on his vigil. Now he was waiting, waiting for her to give him something she couldn't. 

"David Felter?" She asked, reading the name off her notepad. At his nod, she closed it, stuffed it quickly inside her coat. 

For a moment, a quick moment, he looked hopeful, ready to see Susan come up the steps behind Alexis and throw her arms around him and give him all kinds of reasons for her absence tonight; pulling a sudden double, work got busy, caught in traffic (though she didn't drive), fell on a sidewalk, slipped on ice, hell, slept with another man on the side. He would deal with any of those silly irrationalities or stinging truths later, but for an instant, David Felter didn't care about any of those things. He was just waiting for Susan to be alive. 

And then his face hid behind the one of earth, the one of earth's ancient, weary plea. 

"Oh, God. Oh..." 

His quick breaths puffed white air, fell into the deep shadows and now he was just another person who had lost the love of his life. God, she hated this. She hated even more that she had seen Susan's body before coming here, seen the wretched nothing it had become, thrown away in some alley. And she wanted to vomit. 

"...God. God, " he repeated over and over as though He would give answers too that just weren't there. 

"Mr. Felter, you'll have to identify the body." 

He clutched at his chest in a raw, pleading motion, rubbed at the white stitching and watched a few threads come loose. Then a look came over him, a disembodied look like he suddenly didn't know where he was anymore. 

"Maybe I should change." 

"What?" 

"Maybe...maybe I should change -- she uh, she got this sweater for me." 

He looked at the loose threads on his sweater, didn't meet Alexis's eyes. 

"It was our anniversary, " he whispered. 

Then a broken laugh escaped his lips. 

"I offered to pick her up, but she wanted to walk." 

"Mr. Felter --" 

"I should change. If I -- if I wear this...there I -- I won't...I can't wear it again." 

A shaky hand went through his curly brown hair, the other one continued to play with the threads until one finally pulled out. 

As if forgetting completely that a Homicide detective was standing there, had just told him his girlfriend was dead, in fact, he said, "Oh no, she's gonna be mad. She's gonna have to sew it back in, it doesn't look right now. She's gotta sew it, she hates to sew." 

And then, as if realizing suddenly once more what had transpired only minutes ago, he finally looked up at Alexis, tears swimming in his eyes. 

"Susan, " he hushed on the air, his voice cracking. 

"Can you, can you do something for me?" He asked, his voice still shaky. 

Alexis could only nod. 

"Could you just tell me she's okay? I'm not -- I'm not in denial and I'm -- I'm not crazy, I just...I just want to hear it once before the rest of my life leaves her behind." 

There was a clear lucidity in his voice and she didn't doubt for a moment that he fully understood what had happened to Susan. She couldn't have imagined something more heartbreaking, standing here in front of a man whose life had flickered out when he answered the door, and being asked to lie to him just once, just so he could feel it, just for a brief instance; that feeling that everything was okay. 

"Mr. Felter, " she said, her own voice wavering, "we found Susan and she's -- she's just fine. Kept apologizing that she was late for dinner, something about an anniversary?" 

He smiled sadly, started crying openly now. 

"Y-yeah, " he cracked, "together three years. She's something special." 

Alexis leaned forward, touched his shoulder. 

"She is, David, she is." 

He wiped at his tears, smiled again and turned away, distractedly saying, "I gotta change this sweater." 

She nodded. 

"I'll wait out here for you, we'll give you a lift." 

He shut the door and she stood there, tucked her hands back in her pockets. Matt's footsteps clicked in the distance as he took the steps of the stoops in one leap, stood just behind her and waited for her to talk. He watched her shoulders move up in a sigh, but she didn't turn around, didn't want to allow him a look at her tear. 

She had started this day staring down a mutilated stranger in an alley in Queens and would remember it like that, would remember the feel of the wood as she knocked on David Felter's door, remember the all too quick look of hope on his face and then the emergence of total sorrow as he learned the painful truth. She would remember this day by the tears that fell, the white stars at night, and the innocent plea that they pretend this had never happened. 

She would remember this day by the empty things we became, the empty things life grew into. The empty things that took the crazy grins of hope away from us. 

"Bring out the coffins, let the mourners come, " she whispered so quietly only she could hear it. 

"What?" Matt asked behind her. 

"Nothing, " she replied, moving her shoulders up again in a sigh. It was from a poem she had once heard, a poem that seemed so fitting now. 

"Nothing at all." 

Not much good could ever come from this now. Even once they caught the killer...there would be no good left to pretend any of them had even existed. 


	14. Dark Night Seems Endless

**Chapter 14: Dark Night Seems Endless** **Saturday, December 18, 2004**

In profiling criminals, successfully anyway, you had to dig into their past, swim through the folds of it and unravel each little detail, find a meaning for everything. What in that past had triggered the violence they brought forth to their unsuspecting victims? Sometimes, they learned, it was the result of sexual abuse or physical abuse that then manifested itself in their present. 

Other times, it was just something so small and inconceivable you shook your head at the terrible waste of it all. A harsh word here, a brush off there. Been rejected by their crush, laughed at, and God knew what else. 

It was clear now that they had a serial killer loose on the streets of New York City. Previously focused around Manhattan, he'd broken form and killed in Queens. And this time, this time he'd been sloppy. Forensics had taken two complete fingerprints and gathered small drops of blood from the crime scene. 

Susan Goodly had been branded with a letter as well. The letter 'l'. Matt bent over his steno pad, flipped back through the notes he'd made so far. Seven pages had been filled, ranging from speculations on how heavy and tall the attacker was to what he could've been wearing, what kind of fibers they could find around the crime scene. 

He didn't have to look up when Alexis came in. Four victims in and she was feeling the brunt of their failures, had experienced something on that stoop in Queens she might spend her entire life trying to forget and never really be able to. 

They had worked together for four years, had weathered all sorts of cases. From jilted lovers to violent rapes to misanthropic shells of what had once been human beings finding sense enough to kill children. 

They had seen the stuff you spend the first years of your life cowering from in the safety of your bedroom, the stuff you didn't have to see as long as that nightlight never blew out. They saw the stuff you imagined hid under your bed and in nightmares and really, those things were real. 

So maybe he was used to it, used to that weakness in other human beings, but he felt this case like any other. It bothered him, but he wouldn't lose any more sleep over it than others that had passed before. 

From the looks of his partner, she felt differently. 

He wanted to take the pain away but it wouldn't recede, he knew, until they got the guy. Then sometime later, maybe years from now, there would be another case like this, another serial killer, and they would weather it and stop it and keep others from succumbing to the monsters under the bed. 

But there would always be casualties in between that they couldn't stop. 

Sergeant Croslen walked by, waved a hello to Alexis that she could've won an Oscar nomination faking. Boy, could she play people, play them fast and good. But he knew her like a book. She let him know her that way, because partners...partners, he mused, were laying there in your blood with all the other things that made you live. 

"Have we considered the possibility that there's more than one person doing this?" She asked. 

"We are now, " he responded, not looking up as he scratched a few more messy notes about the condition of Susan Goodly's body. 

"I mean, one guy may have done the actual deed, but more than one could be in on this, the planning of it, the torture of the victims." 

He nodded. 

"Where were you by the way?" He asked. 

"Stopped over at the lab again. Same marks around the wrist, just like the others." 

"I'm writing that down now, " he pointed the tip of his pencil to his steno. 

She leaned over the desk, read what he'd written so far. 

"So, we've got 'You all l'. What are you thinking?" 

He finally looked up, met her eyes, though they were still focused on his barely readable chicken scratch. He put the eraser of the pencil against his lip, chewed the thought around his mind for a moment. 

"If I had to guess now, I'd say he was spelling out 'You all lose'." 

"You do that all the time." 

"What?" 

"Read my mind." 

And for the first time that day, she cracked a grin. 

"That's why we're partners. You slack off, I pick up that slack." 

"Slack off? Who solved that triple homicide last year out in Brooklyn Heights, huh? The one that had you pulling two all-nighters?" She wiggled her eyebrows up and down, blew on her nails with cockiness. 

He just smiled. 

They grew silent again. 

"Hey, Matt, you find yourself getting used to this violence? I mean, that's our society now, isn't it? You turn on the TV, you hear about a murder, you flip by it like it's a commercial you've seen ten times already and it's getting so old you've got it memorized. You find yourself feeling that way?" 

"Yeah, " he sighed. 

That blood. That blood between them ran deep like the still waters of quiet mountains. 

The fact that our society bred this type of evil consistently and with rising frequency, it seemed, was something most people had grown used to, no doubt. 

More than just them, though, it looked as if society as a whole expected it now. 

And maybe...that scared him more than anything. 

* 

"I didn't get much on Vincent's neighbor, Kenneth. Guy had what I expected: a few priors for drug possession, but that's about it." 

Jack nodded, glanced around at his team and noticed the fatigue in all their faces, the fatigue he equally felt in his limbs and muscles and every organ that moved. 

"Who was the arresting officer?" 

"Doesn't say. It was over three years ago, so minor he was just fined. Marijuana, from the looks of it." 

"Find out who the arresting officer was. If it was Vincent, we've definitely got motive." 

Martin nodded. 

"Okay, Viv, I want you and Samantha to dig up some of Joseph Marro's old cases, get a feel for him as well. There's something about this guy I don't like." 

They both nodded. 

* 

And here he was again, alone. He was starting to become so familiar with Queens he was rethinking his previous assertion that it wasn't a nice place to live. It had its bad areas, sure, just like every city, but it wasn't any worse than the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

In fact, he'd gotten quite attached to a few of the diners here, namely the Italian one on the corner of 56th and the Indian one on Gladwin Avenue. 

And waiting yet again, he fidgeted in his seat at the five minute marker, hoping what happened yesterday wouldn't repeat again. As though reading his mind, a different officer came back, though empty-handed. 

"File seems to be missing." 

"Missing?" 

"Need me to spell it for ya?" the officer remarked sarcastically. 

"Uh, no. How does a file just go missing?" 

"Look, we've got a lot of files back there, especially on all the drug perps we've busted. Someone like you comes along occasionally to look over old cases, doesn't put 'em back or puts 'em back in the wrong spot, and that's how they go missing. I'm sure it'll turn up." 

How weird was that? 

"All right, thanks." 

* 

She had been so young when she'd first come to Manhattan. Her father had sucked her mother away from her, left one night without warning, her brother had his own problems for a while. When he finally sobered up, she wanted to be close to him, in a big city where no one knew who she was. 

That's what she wanted. She didn't want a name. In a small town, you're recognized in grocery stores and restaurants and asked questions about your parents that you have to lie about because, We don't talk about our family, do we, Sammy? No. No, we don't. But the questions came and she realized once how twisted her father was when she saw her friends interact with their fathers. So that's how they were supposed to be, she thought. Not like hers. Not at all like hers. 

So she needed to get out. And she did. Holed up in a shabby apartment in Midtown with Matt until she got on her own two feet. When she started, he had been starting too, starting a new life. And they had needed each other, had been allowed to be the brother and sister they couldn't be as children. 

He'd become a detective eventually, she'd moved up to Narcotics and...and...push those memories away, push them away. Matt knew what happened during those times and she could only hope he wouldn't tell anyone. It wasn't relevant to their case, not really. So they didn't need to know. 

She hoped they wouldn't. She didn't need it. 

Nothing would be stranger than that...that sympathy in their eyes. The twisted sympathy of obligation, obligation, not understanding or friendship. Just the look of...Poor Sam, we should feel bad for her so we will. 

Now here she was, digging up cases on men she already knew, pretending she didn't. 

"What's going on with the serial murder your brother's working?" Vivian asked as she casually flipped through Joseph Marro's past cases. 

God, was she ever sick of reading these reports. 

"Oh, Viv, another girl was murdered late last night. This time in Queens." 

A funny sort of clicky noise came from Viv's mouth, a sound of regret and unsurprise. 

"Are they getting anywhere at all?" 

"They're coming up pretty dry. Although, I did talk to Lex earlier on the phone, she said they had managed to get two full fingerprints off the latest victim. And some blood, too. She was pretty shaken up." 

"Unusual?" 

"Yeah, I've known her as long as my brother has and...she sympathizes with her cases, but she's always been able to keep a professional distance. Wish I could do it. But this, this girl last night just did her in today." 

Vivian shook her head in sympathy. That obligated sympathy she'd been musing on only minutes before. It looked exactly as she'd expected: a pitifully masked duty. That's all it was. 

"Sam." 

"What?" 

"Back in '95, partner of his accused him of sexual harrassment," Vivian said, pointing to the file. 

Samantha looked up. 

"What happened?" 

"Charges were dropped a few days later." 

"That's odd. I wonder if she still lives in Manhattan?" 

"Only one way to find out." 

* 

It wasn't exactly the neighborhood you would picture a respectable cop to be living in. A junkie neighborhood, at that. The wind started picking up again and they both hoped Leslie Trilcen was still living here, would open the door and let them in, if even for a few minutes. The deep snow blew around, flakes hitting their face in wisps. 

Finally, the door opened just enough for a pair of greyish-white eyes to stare back at them. Samantha and Vivian flashed their badges, introduced themselves, and the door opened fully now, revealing a skinny young woman with knotted hair hanging in tufts around her head. A raggedy sweater fell halfway down her shoulders and she wore ratty sweatpants with holes at the knees. 

"Leslie Trilcen?" Vivian asked. 

She nodded warily, as though expecting something else to go wrong in her life. 

"Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?" 

"What about?" she asked of Vivian, pulling her sweater into her body. 

"Joseph Marro." 

Something in her eyes changed, a flicker of recognition surfaced, then she looked for a moment like she was about to refuse them entry before she at last bowed her head in acquiescence and let them in. 

Clearing a spot on her sunken two-seater, beer-stained couch, she folded her legs beneath her as she took the recliner across from them. Cigarette ashes littered the ground and furniture and the place reeked of alcohol, leaked into the walls. 

A small wall separated the kitchen from the room they sat on, a tiny TV perched on an end table next to the stained couch and a door fifty feet to their right contained the bathroom in privacy. 

"What do you wanna know about that bastard?" she asked, lighting a cigarette in her bony fingers. 

"His brother, Vincent, has been missing for three days. We have reason to believe Joseph might be involved somehow." 

"Vinny? Fuck, he was a scumbag too. Kept appearances around the station, but you get alone with him, that asshole inside shined through, just like his godamned brother." 

Vivian, concentrating on Leslie, didn't notice the knowing look that passed through Samantha's eyes, the look of understanding. She had an idea of what Leslie was talking about. 

"And why were they scumbags, Ms. Trilcen?" Vivian asked. 

"Call me Leslie, please, no one else does. I kinda miss hearing it, " she puffed around her cigarette. 

"Okay, Leslie, what can you tell us then?" 

It seemed a puff of the cancer stick was needed before questions could be answered, Samantha observed. 

"Joined the force early in '95. Came from a bad home, but I wanted to make a better life for myself, get into a good job, you know, make something of myself. I was good at it too, I liked it. I liked cleaning the streets. Now. Heh. Now I'm living what I hated." 

Another puff. 

"Anyway, around June, they paired me with Joseph. Seemed okay at first, nice even. Then about two months into it, he starts acting weird. Turns out, he was only being himself. Christ. He was insane. One night, we're working night shift, it's slow, we're parked in an alley, I'm munching on some crackers. It's fuckin' slow and he decides to get fresh with me. Starts trying to unbutton my uniform." 

"Leslie --" 

"That's not all. He starts pulling on my bra, says I probably got beautiful ones behind that ugly uniform, I look so damn good in the dress blues, he wants to see them off. And then -- God -- then he asks me to blow him. Fuckin' blow him. I pushed him hard against his door, tried to climb out and he grabbed my legs, I got a nasty cut from hitting the door." 

Samantha closed her eyes, Vivian just shook her head. 

"And you reported him." 

"Damn right I did. But turned out Joseph was chummy with the Police Chief who apparently agreed that I was the one pushing myself onto Joseph and if I was real good, they wouldn't put it on my record." 

"So you dropped the charges?" 

"Hell no. I wanted to pursue it, I needed to. So they dropped the charges for me. Nice, right? I lost my job." 

"Leslie, why didn't you bring this to another cop, report them, get the Chief fired?" 

The ash on her cigarette had accumulated into one long strand, finally fell on the carpet with the rest of the ash. A wild, mutely fearful look passed through her eyes. 

"I didn't much feel like it after he raped me and then...then threatened to kill me. Said if I didn't talk about it, he'd leave me alone for the rest of my life. So...I didn't talk about it." 

"God, Leslie --" 

"Look, it was nine years ago, it's over. I wish the bastard would rot in hell, but nothing I do can will fix what happened." 

"Based on your experience, do you think him capable of harming his brother?" 

"Wouldn't put it past him." 

Vivian stood and moved to leave, but Samantha hung back a moment, stood in front of Leslie. Before she could say anything, Leslie spoke. 

"He got you, didn't he?" she asked. 

"Who?" 

"One of them." 

"I don't --" she started, wanting to deny it. Leslie patted her shoulder. 

"Don't look like me in a few years. Talk to someone. You like your name?" 

"Most of the time, " she replied, confused by why it mattered. 

"Then tell someone. Don't lose your name, Agent Spade, don't lose it. No one calls me Leslie anymore...no one, " she said, and walked into her kitchen for a scotch. 

* 

By mid-afternoon, the snow had started to fall again. She agreed to meet Alexis and Matt at the diner across from the FBI building. She seemed to be coming here a lot lately. Choosing the booth furthest from the one she'd shared with Jack yesterday, she took a seat and threw her coat beside her, opened up a menu and waited for them. 

She didn't have to wait long. Matt slid in beside her, Alexis across from her. He stole her menu from her hands. 

"Hey, I was reading that." 

"You know what you're getting. Besides, I'm a skinny ginny, I need to pack some pounds on. Dessert's sounding nice right about now." 

"Meal first, Matthew, " Alexis said through her menu. 

"Sure, Ma, " he winked. 

The waiter came and they ordered. Matt folded his hands together and leaned far back against the booth, looked up at the ceiling. 

"How are you doing, Lex?" Samantha asked. 

"This guy knows what he's doing. More than the usual murderer. He picks up on every little detail, doesn't miss a beat, " she said, reverting to the case rather than her own emotions. 

"Lex, " she said, repeating her question again, "how are you doing?" 

"I'm not gonna lie, I feel like shit. You know what keeps me going? Those women? Probably felt ten times worse just before they died. It keeps me going, Sam, it does." 

Matt suddenly felt his beeper go off, groaned when he saw it. 

"We got to go, partner. The lab's got something for us." 

"Sam, drinks later tonight?" Alexis asked, to which Samantha nodded in agreement. 

* 

"You pulled me away from a Hot Pastrami, Max, this better be good, " Matt spoke as they blew into the forensics lab. 

Max moved around the table, tapped his fingers on the smooth top. 

"Got a match on the blood, traced it back to a Kenneth Mercel, lives in Queens. Right next door to a Vincent Marro." 

Matt turned to Alexis. 

"Sam's missing guy. All right, give us the address, we'll check it out." 

* 

Night fell fast again on Manhattan, always came fast in December. Almost six o'clock and they were hunched over lamps, studying the notes they'd taken and bouncing theories around so wild sometimes they wouldn't have made sense to the most sleep-deprived of agents. 

Samantha came over from where she'd been hunched against her desk on her phone. 

"Got a call from my brother. The blood they found on the latest victim matched Kenneth Mercel." 

"Son of a bitch, " Martin muttered under his breath. 

The city moved routinely below them, people leaving from work, going into their late shifts, leaving home, going home, going out, and finding all points from here to the Upper East Side to keep the lights on all night everyday. By now, they were all aware of the silent predator lurking in the darkness, searching for its next prey, but they continued on like they always had. 

New York City was nothing if not resilient, that much was evidenced through the tragedies and pitfalls it had faced over the span of two hundred years. It had been hit and hurt and tossed around and still it stood. 

The night, the darkness it contained in its infinity, seemed markedly endless -- seemed to stretch on and on and forget the stars that first claimed the sky. The night was endless on this chilly Saturday evening, but it was still brightly lit against the black canvas, staying true to what it had always been; the city of light. 

"They're over in Queens now, but the guy's not there." 

"Probably taking care of his 'stuff', " Vivian remarked and shared a knowing laugh with Martin. 

Vivian and Samantha had filled in the rest of the team on what they'd gathered from Leslie Trilcen. Now Joseph Marro's name was written along with Kenneth Mercel's on the list of possible suspects. Possibly in it together, though time would tell. 

Samantha chanced a look at Jack, not sure what she'd see there, not sure she wanted to see what would be there, but she looked anyway because he was Jack. If it had been any other day of any other year under any other circumstances, if they had been how they were when they started, this could've been an easy time, just looking at him, taking him in, appreciating his olive skin and dark, passionate eyes. 

But they had a past together and now she was sitting here in a conference room looking for a guy who'd made her shiver with his smile, waiting for a killer to be caught, hoping her brother and his partner were all right, hoping no one else would be lost to the endless night. 

Here she was. Hoping maybe he'd look up just as she looked at him and they could forget what had been said yesterday, forget what they'd done and be Jack and Samantha again. She wanted those things, but really, she was just screaming to whispers. 

And she couldn't feel him anymore. 


	15. Lightning Waltz

**Chapter 15: Lightning Waltz** **Saturday, December 18, 2004**

She'd been doing this for the better part of her life, had wedged herself into a routine and was comfortably solidified in it. The prospect of promotion, entailing a nice salary raise was certainly enticing, but truth be told, she wasn't sure she could drag herself away from this team, this work. How often, really -- of all the jobs you would ever work in your life -- were you put in a position like the one she was currently in? 

The position, the place, where she counted on this reaction from Jack, that flaw in Samantha, the wisecrack from Danny and well-meaning mistake in Martin. She expected these things and...and counted on them to keep her life away from home meaningful. Without that familiarity and comfort of friendship, she supposed her work life would fall into this banality. 

She knew them far better than they thought she did and sometimes, Jack especially, took that for granted. They could lie to her or rather, try to lie to her, but it would be feeble and worthless and she could see through the veils, see through it all. 

Vivian saw what know one else thought she did. She saw the way Jack and Samantha were to each other, how they started with this innocent flirting and progressed, she supposed, to the consummation of that attraction. Then it must have ended, shortly before Barry Mashburn and she knew this because Jack seemed unusually conflicted, as though he were trying to prove to himself, more than anything, that he wasn't in love with her anymore. 

At least, that's how Martin described it to her. And then there was Martin, the other factor Jack hadn't considered and still didn't suspect that Vivian knew about, but she could predict the moments it bothered him when they stood just a little too close. 

But Martin and Samantha, though they'd grown closer, hadn't acted on anything because...there wasn't anything to act on. Anything of significance, that is. 

Jack, she knew, was giving his marriage the last measure of loyalty before he jumped right off the gangplank. It was sinking, she knew, sinking hard and fast and there was Jack, still clinging to the top of the crow's nest looking for a safe harbor if only, she suspected, for the girls. To give them what he couldn't have: a family. 

But what he didn't realize was that, while they might have a family, they wouldn't have a happy one. And where would Jack and Maria be when Hanna was 16? 

Danny left for the night, Martin was packing up to go, Samantha was staring at the whiteboard, and Jack moved away from the table to make a phone call in his office. 

His wife. 

She wondered what lies he could come up with tonight. 

And in knowing Jack Malone the way she did, she actually hoped he could find the happy ending his mother never had. 

* 

He couldn't feel the basic essence of time and so it was that he remained forever in the rawest state of pain, similar to the way a wound feels immediately after it's been made, exposing the tissue and blood and everything you tried to hide. It felt like being cut and bleeding. 

It didn't help that Maria didn't seem interested either and they could never just sit and talk and work through their problems. They couldn't just do that because it was an effort to simply be alone together without the awkward feeling like something else needed to be added to the equation before they could even talk as husband and wife. 

I'm sorry, he wanted to say, but...he didn't know how to anymore. He didn't even know who to say it to, really. 

He needed to go home. He needed to see himself in that place and touch the walls with faded blue paint. If he could like it a little again, maybe he could like it a lot once more. Maybe he could. He could do it. He could do it for his kids. 

Replacing the phone back into its cradle, deciding against finding another excuse not to go home, he shut off his lamp and stuffed his hands in his pockets, walked behind Samantha for the second time in the span of a day. Would it be okay if I just stayed here forever? he asked of no one. 

"Samantha." 

She brought the pencil to her chin, rested against the eraser and didn't feel like turning around. 

"I'm going home." 

Silence. 

"Samantha, why don't I give you a ride, there's --" 

"Don't. Don't play my protector, it's not your job. You do that with your wife, Jack, not me. Not me." 

She brought the pencil down, rolled it around her fingers. 

"Besides, I'm going to a bar, spend some time with my brother and his partner." 

He bounced up on his feet for a moment like a little boy standing patiently in a room of bridge-playing middle-aged women who preferred tea to coffee and dinner mints with biscuits. 

"That's good --" 

"Right, look, I should go, " she said, standing up and pulling her coat around her, still not meeting his face. 

And with that, she was gone, leaving the man who'd once been a boy and watched his mom cry when she thought no one was looking, to his demons. 

Samantha, he said to a memory, you might be...you might be the one who can save me. 

* 

Some people, rich people perhaps, preferred bars with classy drinks like Cosmopolitans served up on fancy coasters with little or no music setting the mood. No smoking, save for cigars, and clothing had to be at least on the same caliber as their own, which meant everyone had to wear Prada, Gucci, or fashion from Saks Fifth Avenue. 

Considering no one she knew, especially not her, was like that, Samantha and her colleagues chose a bar that played loud rock music, catered to pool players and heavy drinkers and chain smokers that filled the room with the kind of fog you see in movies. 

This time, she was late and Alexis was already there. She slid in across from her friend and opted out of alcohol for tonight. Funny, some might think, considering the conflicts she'd been having with Jack lately. But she wanted to be aware of those things, if only to really feel more towards him, even if it was anger, than she'd felt in a long time. 

"Matt's not here yet?" she asked. 

"No, he'll be here in a few. This case is even starting to get to him, " she said around her second shot of whiskey. 

It was obviously taking its toll on Alexis -- she never drank straight whiskey unless she had something she really wanted to forget for a few hours. But she held her liquor well. Two shots in and she was just as lucid as she'd been hours ago at the diner. 

"Sam?" she asked, bending forward. 

"What did it feel like when you were shot?" 

Samantha's eyes widened for a moment and she folded her arms across the wooden table. The question came out of nowhere and she couldn't understand the purpose for it, but she answered anyway. 

"It -- you know when you get a pain in a muscle sometimes and it starts out mild, but it builds and builds and it takes over your entire body, and the pain is so intense you can't breathe?" 

Alexis nodded. 

"That's how it felt, Lex." 

It felt like dying. 

Alexis was quiet for a moment before she spoke again. 

"You gotta admire some people." 

"How's that?" Samantha asked, picking up a few chips from the bowl on their plate and munching on them one by one. 

"The ones who find someone to love, you know? I mean, you got that, there's not much more you need." 

"You always get this deep with whiskey?" 

"It's not the whiskey, I've just been doing some thinking is all." 

"And...I think I'm not one of those people. Shit, I wouldn't know love if it came up and bit me on the ass, " she said, bitterly. 

Samantha smiled sadly. She was wrong, of course. Alexis did know love. It came in all forms really, and she knew the love two partners had when they shared their lives completely, like her and Matt did. They had that kind of love, the one that remained sacred. 

"I think you are one of those people, Lex. You are." 

She took another sip of whiskey, tapped at the glass. 

"What about you, Sam? You got someone to love?" 

She hesitated, knew what she wanted to say, but couldn't, and was surprised when Alexis smiled knowingly. 

"I see it." 

"What?" 

"Your sin." 

"Lex --" 

She waved her hands, pushed her glass aside. 

"We've all -- we're all shit sometimes, I see it. I see the bad...and I see the good. And you're good, you and Danny and Martin and Matt and Vivian...and Jack. And maybe you make a mistake and you fall in love with a guy you can't have, but sometimes...I think the biggest sins are the ones we committ to ourselves." 

"Such as?" 

"Such as the one where you tell yourself you don't love him and you think you don't and spend the rest of your life smiling at his back in the dark. It's this -- this lightning waltz." 

"What?" 

"Like this dance -- a waltz, you know? I've seen you two together, I've seen him with his wife. You wanna know who makes him smile, Sam? It's you. But you push him away, he pulls you back, he pushes away, you pull him back. You waltz around each other in this lightning storm, both afraid you're gonna get hit -- get hurt and lose it all and...maybe you walk out into that storm and all you get is...is...sunshine." 

"This is deep for Saturday night..." 

"When are you gonna start living the rest of your life?" 

"With him?" 

She nodded. 

"When he tells me I can love him again, " Samantha said. 

The shrill ring of a cell phone broke the morose mood that had come over them and Alexis plugged her left ear to hear better as she responded to the voice on the other end. She flipped it closed and stood, grabbing her coat and laying a few bills on the table. 

"Sorry to cut it short, but...God, we've got another body." 

* 

Matt made a circle around the victim, finally crouched down beside her and lifted a bruised arm with his gloved hand. 

"Same markings, she was obviously tortured. She's got an 'o' carved in her chest." 

"Looks like you were right about that message partner." 

He itched his forehead awkwardly with his elbow. 

"Well, we won't know that for sure until he actually completes his message, but hopefully we'll get him before he can do that." 

Alexis knelt beside a CSU who took an array of photos from all angles. She made a gasping sound. 

"What?" he asked. 

She touched the hem of the victim's skirt. 

"She was sexually assaulted, Matt." 

* 

"I made dinner, it's in the fridge, " Maria spoke as he came in. 

She had an afghan pulled up to her chest, watched him in the half glow of the TV as he threw his keys on the table and sat in the nearest chair. He loosened his tie and pulled his collar away from his skin. He didn't much feel like eating. 

"Hanna got an A on her Math test, she was so worried about it, so --" 

"What are they studying?" he asked and felt ashamed that the question needed to be posed in the first place. 

"Adding and subtracting fractions. You know...halves and wholes." 

Somewhere, he thought, there was an irony in that remark and he wondered if it wasn't deliberate. 

As though she could pull it up any further, she tugged at the afghan in...boredom, he surmised, and sighed. 

"Jack, I cancelled our appointment for Monday." 

"Why? I should have this case --" 

"Jack. I -- I miss it." 

He looked up from the ugly kitchen tile he'd been counting lines on. 

"What?" 

"Being...in love." 

"Maria --" 

She waved at him, pulled her arms out from under the blanket, and turned to face him. 

"We've -- we've been doing this for all the wrong reasons." 

"Such as?" 

"Are we doing this for us, Jack, or the girls? Look at me and tell me you don't agree with me. At least give me that." 

When he didn't respond, she had her answer. 

"So where do we go from here?" he asked. 

"Anywhere, " she replied, gesturing her hands apart. 

He bowed his head again to the cold kitchen tile. He thought of Samantha and how right she felt, how warm she was compared to this cold, drafty house. She was the thing that made sense and...she was the thing that scared him. 

He looked at his wife again and tried to remember what it felt like when he couldn't look at her without wanting to run his fingers through her brown hair, let the soft strands fall gracefully between his fingers and move around her skin in a quiet serenade. 

He tried to remember a time when he felt like that and...it felt so long ago. Now, he looked at her and cared for her as this person who loved his children and did good things, but couldn't love her like...men were supposed to love their wives. 

But...but you couldn't say they never tried. 

Because they did. 

They just...lost whatever it was that made them whole. And when that was gone, so was the memory of looking at her and wanting to be near her. Gone was the comfort of hope and faith embodied in one person. Gone was the reassurance of a life without loneliness. 

Gone was the rest of his life. 

How would he ever find it again? 


	16. Tongue of Angels

**Chapter 16: Tongue of Angels**

**Sunday, December 19, 2004**   
**12:34 a.m.**

_Her porcelain skin shimmered in the late afternoon sun, illuminating her eyes and hair and shining her entire body into a bright angel of faith. He had found it now, found his faith, and she was right in front of him. _

They stood on a ferry in New York Harbor, moving fast enough for her loose strands of hair to flap around so perfectly she looked both childish and beautiful and squinted at the golden torch of Lady Liberty as they circled her. 

He was thinking about how perfect this was and moved his hand out to touch her, longing to caress her the way he'd been dying to for so long. To touch her and not care who saw, to show the world who he loved. But his fingers never reached and she started drifting further from him as they continued to bob up and down with the waves. 

Tears fell down her face and he called her name but she wouldn't respond. She kept saying, "Maybe it didn't hurt for you, maybe it didn't..." 

God, Samantha, what? What didn't hurt? 

Suddenly, she gasped and a dark spot of red opened on her chest. She started to fall back, but he reached out to catch her, praying he would be able to, and sighing in relief when he could. 

Her eyes glassed over and both hands touched the blood, one moving up to his cheek and rubbing it in fascination. 

"You're here..." 

He smiled, tears forming in his eyes. 

"Where did you go?" she asked. 

"I've always been here, Sam. I've always been watching you, even when you couldn't see me, " he said, his voice breaking around his emotions. 

She gasped for breath, started coughing up blood, and he pulled her closer to him, blood soaking his white shirt. 

"That -- that's never going to come off, " she smeared her hand against his chest. 

"What?" 

"That -- that stain, Jack, that stain in you..." 

She gasped again and her lips started turning blue. 

"God...oh, God, Sam, no, please...please, don't --" 

She touched her bloody fingers to his lips, traced them, then moved her pointer finger to her own lips. 

"Shhh, " she said, tears forming in her translucent eyes, "shh. I've always known..." 

His chest wavered with panic. 

Near death now, she gathered up the strength to ask, "Who would you choose?" 

"W-what?" 

"Who -- who would you choose, Jack? If you could bleach this shirt and it was -- it was Maria or me...who -- who would you c-choose?" 

A silence passed between them and all that could be heard was the wheezing of her failing lungs, his quiet sobs, and the gentle crashing of waves in the harbor as the Statue of Liberty sang to him in the twilight. He watched the sun begin to dip behind the clouds and when he looked back down at Samantha, she was dead, her head falling against his chest. 

He weeped openly now, rocking her back and forth on the ferry with no passengers or drivers, the city with no people, and the world with no love. The last of it had left with her. 

"You, " he barely managed, "I -- I'd choose you." 

Jack Malone, bathed in sweat, sat straight up on the couch. No scream or gasp or cry of emotion, he just left the dream as quickly as he could and fell back against the couch, feeling the brunt of the emotional turmoil he'd just experienced. 

Though barely above thirty degrees outside, he threw the blanket away from his wet skin and clothes, sat for a moment in the darkness, his boxers providing little defense against the bursts of cold air striking the room every few minutes. Even with the heat on, he shivered. He tugged at his white shirt, fanning out his skin, and continued to sit there. 

"Samantha, " he whispered so softly almost he couldn't hear it. 

Oh, God, he thought, take...take my job, my car, my fuckin' suits and cellphone and beepers, but God almighty, just don't take her. Please don't. 

And in that moment, he realized what she was to him in a way he never had before. A stupid dream, he knew -- it was a stupid dream, but...but it could've happened, could still happen in some way or time or place and he didn't want to be that man on that lonely ferry in the world that had left him...clinging to the one last thing he had...Samantha...and watching her leave as well. He didn't want to be that man. Couldn't be that man. 

He found he could be the one that hurt Maria far better than he could be the one who sought answers to a dying woman who had never stopped loving him. 

Standing on shaky legs, he moved his hands through his hair, fixing it and messing it up and fixing it again. Then...he thought of his mother. 

_Oh, Valentino, we need to get that hair cut..._

Oh, shit, why now? Why...why now, of all times to think of her? 

_Why, Ma? _

Your hair's growin' in your eyes, babe, and we wanna see those eyes. Those beautiful eyes. Come here, I'll tell you a secret... 

What, Ma? his tiny five-year old body whispered. 

You got my eyes, babe, my eyes. So we're alike, you and me, we'll always be together, now won't we, Jackie? You've got 'em, Jack, you've got 'em... 

My eyes... 

He rubbed at his eyes with the memory, softly at first, then brushed angrily at the skin now, thinking of her. 

He missed her, he did, but...but...he didn't want to be her. And...maybe that's where he was heading if he stayed in this cold house with little heat on a street of ancient memories with a woman that forgot his name sometimes. 

Jack shuffled to the front door, turned the knob gently, and opened. The wind was strong, blew his shirt around in the wind, and a freezing rain fell, ready to become snow in little time. Still, he stood, the wind blowing his already messy hair around. 

Then he thought of the two women he loved; one, who'd been lost forever, and the other, who he stood to lose so quickly as she tangled by a thread from his fingers. 

"Why?" he asked of the freezing rain and his mother. 

"Just...just tell me why, Ma, just tell me..." 

If his wife came down or neighbors saw, maybe they'd avoid him for a while in confused wariness, but he spoke to air that had once been there anyway. 

"I needed you, I needed you so much and you just...you just left. Didn't you -- didn't you care? Oh, God Ma, why? What the hell am I supposed to do now?" 

Nothing spoke but the trees as their leaves brushed against one another in the fierce coming storm. 

Then, he sank slowly to his knees and watched the world move around him, the world he was slowly losing each day he stayed in this marriage, this marriage without love. 

"Samantha..." 

"S-samantha, " he continued to whisper. 

And still, there was no reply, save for the tongue of angels singing a broken chorus; pleading for him to wait, to hold on just a little longer to his faith, because he would have it, have it always now. The angels were telling him not to give up on her, that they would find each other again. 

Just the tongue of angels and freezing rain and Jack Malone wondering who would still love him enough to keep the loneliness at bay. 

* 

Jeffrey Pesna had become a cop for the reasons most guys do. Some, perhaps, joined for fame and glory, but most...most joined because they wanted to make a difference, big or small. They came from fractured childhoods mostly, and wanted to fix what they saw wrong. 

Jeffrey couldn't say he came from one of those glistening flawless families that lived in the suburbs, the one whose children lived disaparately different lives from him, sheltered from harsh truths about the way society really worked until they were too old to cope and ended up in washed out marriages with miserly existences at the tender age of forty wondering where they'd gone wrong. 

He couldn't say he came from that place; couldn't say his mom wore an apron, dusted everyday, cooked big dinners on Sunday, listened to him when he talked or had warm cookies and cold milk waiting for him when his little legs carried him up the cracked concrete stoop in Brooklyn; couldn't say his dad didn't remember the war he'd been in and fought for and tried to make sense of; couldn't say his dad didn't remember, either, the feel of his friend's callused trigger finger as he held it tightly, watching him plead for his life as imminent death approached on the cold, wet ground in Northern France; couldn't say he didn't remember some German and still muttered it in his sleep, snuck out to the back porch and rocked the creaky swing until the sun came up and the guns in his head stopped going off. 

Sometimes, the morning sky was red and he'd find his father in sheltered fear waiting for that godamn war to end, he'd say. He just wanted it to end. 

Jeffrey couldn't say his father didn't drink sometimes to forget, but it was okay, really. Because when he didn't drink...he was just a ghost with these dead bodies in his head begging him not to let them die. 

Maybe if Jeffrey had been one of those happy, naive suburban kids he used to pick on in school, he would have been making his fortunes in stocks and bonds; then maybe he would've been happy, or maybe not. Maybe he would've died in the World Trade Center. He could've been a journalist, what with his aggressive nature and knack for world affairs; he could've, but then, maybe he would've been shot by some foreign man he never knew, who never knew him, on soil he'd never touched and sky he'd never seen and wondered what they might be saying about him as the gun went off. 

If he had to die, he wanted it to mean something, which of course, in his line of work, was a given...for the most part anyway. He wanted to fix the things he'd seen and if he'd done that, maybe it was worth it. 

He'd had a good run in his work, lost a few bad guys, but caught most of them. Had some damn good partners, real damn good, that is, until Vincent Marro. He'd worked with the guy six months and they still hadn't found their niche. Jeffrey attributed it to the sole fact that Vincent...well, Vincent didn't give a fuck. He really didn't. Neither did his brother. 

But when Lieutenant Joseph Marro had called him up a few hours ago and asked if he might weasel his way into the investigation on his brother's disappearance, he didn't protest. He wanted to know, really. Something didn't sit right there. Something.... 

And when Jeffrey heard of the latest victim of the serial murderer, he'd called Matthew Spade and Alexis Collins -- both of whom he'd had brief, but steady contact with over the course of his career -- and asked if they wouldn't mind an extra pair of eyes for this one. 

Serial murders, he knew, were special. And even though you ran the show, you sure as hell didn't protest all the help you could get. 

So he threw his thick coat over his shoulders, adjusted the flaps around his neck, and took a bite of his sandwich before shoving off. A little past midnight and he was wide awake. Something....just something didn't sit right at all.... 

* 

The rain that started to fall didn't help the crime scene one bit. Detectives moved around in a flurry, trying quickly to preserve what evidence they could before it washed away with the water down the sewer. 

Alexis rubbed her cold hands together, blew what little hot air she could on them, and stood back up again as forensics dusted for prints around the body. The carefully carved 'o' in the chest was fresh, fresher, at least, than the previous ones. 

"Getting anything?" Jeffrey asked as he shuffled up beside her. His good looks were evident even in the deep darkness and she smiled. 

"Yes, actually. Our guys are picking up a few prints, so we might finally be able to get this guy. She was sexually assaulted as well, so there should be traces of semen." 

"They always get sloppy." 

"This one -- maybe too late." 

He shook his head. 

"Never too late, Collins, never. Guys like this -- kill a hundred women plus, if given the chance. You catch him before that, you win." 

He knelt down. 

"Never too late, " he said again, pulling on a glove and running a finger over the woman's chest. The blood was dry, her skin wet. The crime scene was fresh, so there was a big chance the forensics team hadn't found clothing or hair yet. Prints and semen and blood, especially in the rain, were the most important pieces of evidence to collect. 

He scrutinized the body, traveled his eyes down slowly, hoping to find anything that the killer could have left behind. Finally, he saw a flash of color. Bending forward, he picked up the piece of metal. It was fairly small, but he would recognize it anywhere. 

And his blood ran cold. 

* 

**7:32 a.m.**

Evidently, the tentative snowball fight had been postponed, though Martin was mentally preparing his packing technique for efficient casualties. Unless they closed the case by this afternoon, it was starting to look like there would be no time off for a while at least...for any of them. 

In a week, it would be Christmas. 

This, he reflected, was possibly the longest case they had ever worked. It was dragging on with little to no leads and no real motivation for finding this guy. He lived alone, wasn't exactly citizen of the year, didn't have a history of being particularly friendly, and very well could have just left and gotten the hell out of this city. 

No one, Martin thought, would miss him. 

"Martin, I need you to hammer the cops for information on who busted Kenneth Mercel. It's looking like he might be the serial killer. He could have had a vendetta against these victims relating back to that. We need to know." 

"Danny, Viv, I want you tailing Joseph Marro, clock anything suspicious, he's got to know something, he's just not telling us." 

They nodded. 

"Sam, we're going to pay your brother a visit." 

"Why?" she curled her eyebrows up in slight confusion. 

"Something's pulling these two cases together." 

* 

"Well, I've told you most of what we know, plus it's splashed all over the news, " Matt waved his hand in a downward motion of defeat. 

"Any suspects?" 

"Our impartial print gave us a general idea. Lab's backed up now, plus we've got new blood and semen so I don't know what that'll give us, but I'd have to say we're focusing on Kenneth Mercel. The only problem is...I just can't find a motive there." 

Jack nodded, watched Samantha look around the station, half paying attention to the details she already knew. 

"We had two full fingerprints and they matched Kenneth Mercel as well. It's possible that he was present and took part in the torture, but didn't actually committ the murders. My gut's telling me he's not the one doing it." 

"Why?" 

"Our murderer is good. Too good. Kind of guy who'd know what details to plan for, what to clean up and what we'd be looking for. Just...smart." 

"Could it be a cop or someone working in forensics who would know that sort of thing?" 

"Could be. We'll know more later today when we get our labs back on the last victim." 

Matt moved behind his desk, grabbed his notepad. 

"Anything you can tell us about the latest victim?" 

"Got an I.D. on her -- name's Stacy Klama, age 25, living in Queens. Interesting." 

"What?" 

"Lives two blocks down from the apartment building shared by Vincent Marro and Kenneth Mercel." 

Jack shot Samantha, who had finally turned back to the conversation, a glance, and she gave him a look that seemed to say, You were right. 

"You heading out?" Jack asked. 

"Queens -- see what this guy's hiding." 

"Mind if we join you?" 

"Be my guest. I'll be ready in a second." 

At that moment, Jack's cellphone rang. He turned away from Matt and Samantha, walked a little further back when he realized it was Maria. 

Samantha turned as casually as she could to watch him from her vantage point. He seemed to grow more agitated by the minute, then the conversation ended abruptly. When he returned, she couldn't read his emotions as frustration or fear. 

"I've got to get home, sorry." 

"Jack, what's wrong?" 

He paused, took a breath. 

"Maria got a letter in the mail -- telling her she would die today. It -- it might be from our serial killer." 

"Shit, " Matt swore under his breath. 

Samantha made a move to say something but couldn't feel around for the right words before Jack spoke to her. 

"Samantha, go with Matt, if Kenneth's our guy, we can bring him in and end this right now." 

Do this, his eyes said, for my wife and me. 

What she didn't know was he didn't mean it in the way she thought. He meant...he needed Maria to be safe because she was a mother and...he'd once loved her. And that meant something once and still did. 

She nodded, brushed a quick hand on his shoulder, and left. 

* 

The drive to Queens remained mostly silent and she watched her brother's face for any signs of...of defeat. 

He was fairly open, for a cop anyway, but he still remained as enigmatic as the day he'd been born. Sometimes you thought you knew what he might be thinking, other times, you were just plain wrong. 

"Where's Lex?" she asked. 

"Hanging out at the lab, poking 'em with a cattle prod, you know, if they're not moving fast enough." 

Something came to her then and she didn't know why now of all times. Or why at all, really, but it was there and she had to ask. 

"You killed people in Vietnam, Matt." 

His knuckles tightened around the steering wheel. Why the hell is she bringing this up now? 

"Yeah." 

"Have you -- have you ever since?" 

He paused, took a breath, grateful she hadn't wanted him to elaborate on that. 

"No." 

"Ever even...fired your gun?" 

He squinted one eye shut in concentration, pulled his left elbow up to rest by the window, leaned his head against his hand. 

"Came close a few times, but no. I've been lucky." 

Just pure, dumb luck. If he had to fire, he wasn't quite sure the effect it would have on him. He'd practiced in firing ranges, sure, but those places were nothing compared to the sound of metal hitting flesh and the span of time that passed between the impact where you wondered who had been hit and who would never walk or talk or breathe again. 

She just nodded as he pulled up to Kenneth Mercel's apartment building. 

As fate or...luck -- since they were talking about it -- would have it, the man was exiting the building, taking the steps briskly, pulling his hood over his head as he felt the steady rain fall against his body. He happened to look up and upon seeing the two agents, made a break for it. 

Both took off after him and Samantha, smaller and ahead of her brother, managed to tackle the man to the ground and hold him until Matt came up behind her, hauled Kenneth up, and slammed him against the brick wall. 

"Brutality, " Kenneth's hoarse voice croaked out as he looked around frantically for neighbors or anyone to help him. 

Matt leaned in. 

"Brutality? I'm just getting started. Besides, you got someone around here who can be a witness to that?" he winked in his face. 

Samantha leaned forward, business coming to the forefront of her mind. 

"Why are you running, Kenneth? Got something to hide?" 

He shook his head quickly, which meant, of course, that he was lying. 

One hand still on the man's chest, Matt reached into his trenchcoat and dug out the picture they'd gathered of the latest victim -- Stacy Klama -- and shoved it into Kenneth's face, waving it around for good measure. 

"You know this girl?" 

For a second, he looked like he might deny it. 

"Yeah, " he hesitated. 

"Well, she's dead, Kenneth. And your fingerprints are all over her." 

"Dead?" he stammered. 

"Yeah, dead. And I'm fixing to put you away for her murder and the murder of five other women. Where were you last night?" 

"H-here, " he stuttered, eyes growing wide. 

"Anyone vouch for that?" 

He shook his head no slowly and Matt slapped the cuffs on him, reading him his rights as he did so. 

* 

Martin was growing weary now. Not only was he not getting anywhere, but they weren't being exactly helpful about any of it either. He was thinking about how this day could've been different. Sunday, normally, was a day he slept in just a little past nine, stretched the stress of the past week out of his muscles, and took a walk -- sometimes a jog -- through Central Park. 

After that, he usually had lunch and sometimes he'd treat himself to a restaurant. Then, he'd take in a movie and by six o'clock, his day was nearly over. A few calls to friends here and back home would be made and he'd settle into his small, old, comfy couch and search for something to watch until he turned in early. 

That would be his usual Sunday, one he counted on like clockwork to help ease the frustration of the previous week and rejuvenate him for the upcoming one. He wouldn't have his usual Sunday and man, did he feel it everywhere. The fatigue leaked into his bones and his eyes, if he could've seen them, would've been red and bloodshot and looking as though they should've never opened today. 

"You're persistent, I'll give you that, " the officer spoke as he came in front of Martin, tugged at his belt, and took a seat behind his desk. He pushed a few papers in Martin's direction and crossed his hands. 

"Still couldn't find the file, the paper one on record anyway, but seein' as you're gettin' on my nerves, I dug around for ya and found the file on computer, printed it out. How do ya like that? It's your lucky day, kid." 

Martin raised a slight eyebrow at the word 'kid'; guy wasn't more than five years older than Martin himself. He didn't want to peruse over it here in the station so he stood, shook the officer's hand. 

"Thanks, " he said, and left. 

Once he was in his car, he basked in the luxury of his comfortable car seat, pushed down into its softness, and flipped through the file. 

The arresting officer was in fact Vincent Marro and his partner. And his partner was.... 

* 

**4:53 p.m.**

Jack hadn't come home right away. He'd needed to get everything in order at work and talk to Maria over the phone, ask her exactly what was written in the note and what it looked like and he'd tried to draw a conclusion solely from that. 

He wanted her to be okay, but...he just didn't want to go home right away. Now, here he was, parked in front of their building. 

Hours ago, he had stood at the front of his house with an open door, watching the rest of the world go by and wondering how he might jump back on and start finding life again. With Samantha, he had this esoteric relationship; one of privacy from outsiders and understanding of each other alone. With Maria, he had this...this farce. 

He shut the door of his car, walked up to his house, and stood in the open doorway, taking a deep breath. 

"Maria?" he called. 

She came around the corner, looking flustered and anxious, threw her arms around him. He hugged her back and leaned against the wall, moving his hands up and down her back. 

"Jack, " she sniffled against his shirt. 

"It's okay, it's okay, " he repeated over and over. 

Finally, they broke apart slowly, her fingers still clinging to his hand. He squeezed hers back in reassurance and smiled. The hand, he noticed, no longer held her ring. 

"It was in the mail. It's -- it's weird, Jack, " she said, handing him the letter. It was in a ziploc bag already and he smiled at her initiative. Some things from his job, it seemed, had rubbed off on her. 

He dropped her hand slowly, telling her with his eyes once more that it was okay, and leaned against the table as he read the small note: 

_

Maria, 

_

Such a beautiful name. Beautiful. Maria. I usually like names that start with 'S', but...you're the exception. Your husband is quite tenacious, isn't he? Do you think he'll save you, Maria? Do you really think so? I hope he does. I like adventure. I want you, Maria, and what I want, I get. I'll be coming for you tonight. Lock your doors. You might have seen my previous work on the news. Those girls, they were just for fun. You're my special one, Maria. Oh and, might want to get the kiddies out of the house tonight. Wouldn't want those precious little girls to find you after I'm done with you. Sleep tight. 

Jack's hand shook as he held it. He rubbed Maria's cheek in comfort and spoke. 

"I've got to make a few calls. I'll be right here the whole time." 

Now, he thought he knew where Vincent Marro was. 


	17. Eden is Burning

**Chapter 17: Eden is Burning**

**Sunday, December 19, 2004**

If things had been different, she might have chosen a career in forensics. The science of it, the facts and constants of the work fascinated her. Suspects and perps and even family members of victims lied and deceived for one reason or another. To cover up a murder or indiscretion or something they never wanted people to know. 

In forensics, though, you had truth. Fingerprints and blood and hair and all kinds of evidence -- none of that lied, none of it. You could bet money on it. If things had been different, she might have been the one hunched over a microscope or searching through fingerprint records for matches. Then again, she might not even want a life like that, if things had been different. She wouldn't have Matt and she wouldn't trade him for anything in the world. 

The lab techs moved around quickly, shouting about this and that with words that sounded more like noises she'd expect an animal to make. She bent closer, leaned on her elbows in rapt fascination as the tech in front of the computer put in the print they'd taken from the crime scene and searched for a match. 

They matched it against Kenneth Mercel's prints and she blinked when it came back negative. 

"He was our guy, " she said, finger now pointing to the screen in disbelief. 

The tech shrugged. 

"It's negative, Detective. These are someone else's prints." 

"Whose?" she mused aloud and the tech shrugged again. 

She turned away, scratched a lazy hand against her forehead and sighed. 

"This case doesn't make any sense." 

* 

The car had been new once, shiny with the tint of fresh paint and unblemished perfection. It must have had that new car smell once too, the one that hung around the leather and steering wheel and attached to the seats for at least six months; the smell that made you feel important because you had this car, had made it far enough to get a car like this. 

Government-issued, sure, but it had still been a nice car once. Older agents got the new cars, had earned the fresh metal by doing what they did far too long to even remember when they'd started. They deserved it, he guessed. And really, this car wasn't so bad. Old, yeah, but still running good. He rubbed at the dashboard and smiled. 

Okay, now he was bored. He was having sentimental feelings for a car he'd never thought twice about before. Sometimes, tailing someone was incredibly overrated. 

"How's Reggie doing, Viv?" 

She'd been watching the red brick intently, waiting for a piece of the wall to fall maybe. It would certainly make things interesting. She looked at Danny, moved her arms inside her coat. 

"Better. I was worried last year he might be getting away from me, but he's good, Danny. He's good." 

She rubbed her gloved hands together, adjusted the heat. The rain had turned to sleet, but it wasn't falling too heavily and they could still watch the front of the station with enough clarity. Turning on the wiper blades would give them away. Although, she doubted very much that no one hadn't figured them out, given the hours they'd been sitting here. She glanced at her watch. It was pushing three hours now. 

"Whatever happened to that girlfriend of yours?" she asked, watching the brick again. 

He'd broken up with the fire inspector, Chris Sanders, for a number of reasons. He'd initially been attracted to her beauty and ambition, that spark of fire in her eye that must have leaked through from the work she did everyday. And they'd had fun together, gone to movies and concerts and did things...well, did things that friends did. Until one day he realized it was more about the physicality of being together than emotionally being connected. 

And Danny...Danny was tired of it. He wanted to be in love or...hell, just love someone even. Love them as a friend or sister or brother or whatever. He just wanted it. So they'd ended six months ago and he was content to wait again like he'd done before. 

"Chris? We -- we're just friends." 

"Friends? Those are always good, " she smiled. 

"Right." 

He drummed a brief rhythm against the steering wheel, sighed, and rolled his head back against the seat. 

Just as Danny was about to ask, for clarification purposes, why they were still here, a knock on his window caught his attention. He rolled it down only a crack so the sleet wouldn't get into the already cold car. There stood Lieutenant Joseph Marro, hood pulled over his head and smiling. 

"Just wanted to let you guys know I'm grabbing a bite, " he said, knocking the glass with this knuckles softly once and walking away. 

Danny rolled the window back up and shared a stare with Vivian. 

"Well, that was pointless." 

She nodded. "I'll call Jack, hang on." 

While she spoke, Danny bit at his nails, a nervous habit he'd only recently picked up, although, he didn't really bite his nails when he was nervous. He bit them more out of boredom than anything. 

"He wants us to head back. He's at home right now." 

"Why?" 

"Someone's threatening Maria." 

* 

The room was familiar. She'd done a lot of her best work in this room, staring down liars and would-be killers, daring them to lie to her face in the eye of justice. The room...it did things to you after a while. Whether you were the suspect or the interrogator. 

It was drab and measly. And rightly so, of course. It reminded her of a room they might use to debrief spies and crack communists, but it served its purpose, so who was she to question it? But sometimes, sometimes she just wanted to step out of this room and question a suspect in the conference room or an office somewhere. 

Just to escape these white walls and mirrors you couldn't see out of. If you stayed in here long enough, you might start thinking you were the only one left in the world. Maybe...you didn't have to be in this room to feel that way. 

Matt stood on the other side of the mirror. Martin might be joining him soon, she wasn't sure. 

Kenneth, she surmised, wasn't very smart, but he was capable of hiding things, capable perhaps of assisting at least in the murders. No way he could've done it alone, but he knew things and she would crack him. Already, she could see his confidence slipping away. 

She pushed photos of the previous victims in his face, got satisfaction from his flinch. Then she pushed a picture of the latest victim, Stacy Klama, in his face. 

"You knew her, Kenneth, tell us how you knew her." 

He rested his cuffed hands on the table, interlaced his fingers. 

"She -- she was my girlfriend." 

Samantha drew in a breath. 

"When did you see her last?" 

His eyes scanned the white walls, looked for a way out. 

"You're here with me, Kenneth, and we're not leaving until you tell me when you last saw her." 

He scratched, or at least tried to scratch, at his head with the pointer finger of his right hand. It was messy and looked like it hadn't been washed in days. 

"Uh, shit, uh...'bout two days ago, I guess." 

"Uh-huh, " she said, not convinced in the least. 

Just then, the door slammed open and Jack burst in, slammed his fist on the table. 

"Did you send that letter? Did you!?" he asked, eyes on fire. He slammed his fist on the table once more for good measure and felt satisfied when the guy jumped on the second one. 

"W-what letter? What the hell are you talking about?" the fear in his eyes rose now as Jack leaned into his face. 

"Don't play dumb, Mercel, don't you do it, " he yelled. 

Samantha moved towards him, lay a hand gently on his arm and Jack relaxed, only slightly, at her soft touch. 

"Jack, we'll get him. We've got enough to hold him for now, let's put him in a cell and let him think about what he's doing and who he's trying to protect. We'll get him, " she repeated, fractionally unnverved that she was making this decision and not him and attributed it to his frenzied emotions. 

Jack nodded and didn't even blink as an agent came in and took him away. 

"Jack, what's going on?" 

He looked up, his dark eyes brewing with emotion. He had all these feelings he wanted to just efface from his mind and forget about, crawl into a bed and sleep uninterrupted for once. 

"He threatened my wife, Sam and -- I don't know. He says he's going to kill her tonight." 

"You don't think it's Mercel, do you?" 

He shook his head, ran a quick hand through his hair. 

"No. No, it's someone else. Mercel's working with him, I'm sure of it, but he's not the one." 

Matt overheard what they were saying, walked up behind Jack. 

"My partner's at the lab, I'll check in with her and see what we've got. You want some detail on your house tonight, Jack?" 

Jack met Matt's eyes, nodded silently. Matt nodded back to him, patted his shoulder quickly. 

"I'll be in touch, " he said, and left. 

Jack turned back to Samantha. 

"I've got a favor to ask, " he spoke, trepidly. 

"Sure." 

"I don't want the girls in the house tonight. Could you -- could you take them?" 

"Oh, Jack, I --" 

"Samantha, please, it's just one night." 

She was silent for a moment before nodding. 

"Okay, Jack." 

* 

Matt found his partner fairly quickly. In a room of lab-coated techs, her dark trenchcoat wasn't hard to spot. She liked being on the street and picking up clues, digging around crime scenes for details and impracticalities. She lived for it, but sometimes, he saw her light up around this kind of thing, the forensic aspect of it, the ability to dig deeper. 

She was like a novel, one you never put down; always something new wrote itself on the next page and twenty years from now, they might have put an epic together between them. 

"You got anything yet?" he asked as he moved next to her. 

She flung her hands up in the air. 

"The whole damn thing is like invisible ink, that's our case -- this invisible ink you can't see until you throw apart entire lives and all you've got left is...more invisible ink." 

"So I take it we didn't get a match on the prints?" 

"How can our previous prints match Mercel's and now...now this woman turns up dead and he's nowhere to be found?" 

"It was his girlfriend, too." 

"His girlfriend? Oh, peachy. It just gets better and better. All right, " she sighed, rubbing a hand through her dark hair. 

"Lex, what have we got on our blood and semen?" 

She covered her mouth with her hand lazily, rubbed up and down along the skin. 

"Nothing. We've got to have a blood or semen sample to match it up against, so we're drawing a blank there. If there's more than one killer out there, we're running out of time. And if that's Kenneth's blood and semen, we've got him anyway. Which still leaves us with another killer." 

"You hanging around here for a little longer?" 

She nodded. 

"Another half an hour, maybe, see if they can give us anything else. You want to meet for dinner after that?" 

"Sure. Gennaro's?" 

"You know it, " she winked. 

* 

Jack took a moment to gather some things from his office. If he was going to camp out at his house for the rest of the night, he wanted to have something to occupy his time. Filling a bag, he stopped when he heard a quiet knock at his doorway. 

"Jack, " Martin said, "I uh, I got what you wanted." 

The folder flopped up and down in his hand. Jack would've expected a pride in his eyes at his find, considering it had taken him the better part of the day, obviously, to track the information down. And drive back to Manhattan. And traffic at five o'clock, even on a Sunday, was a bitch. But he didn't see pride or the look one might have when they were awaiting acknowledgment of their achievement. 

Instead, he looked...upset about something. 

"What's wrong?" he asked. 

Martin looked behind him quickly, hoping to avoiding spying eyes or prying ears. He stepped further into Jack's office and swallowed hard. He wasn't sure really why he was upset. It could have been a number of things, but maybe it was because he, like his colleagues, suspected there was more to Vincent Marro, much more -- something sinister, even -- than they'd originally thought or even considered. 

And to think...to think of who had once been his partner, sent chills down his spine. So he swallowed hard again and handed the folder to Jack, stood back. 

"Samantha ever tell you she worked in Narcotics?" Martin asked, trying to be casual. 

Jack nodded, silent as he flipped through the pages. 

"She tell you who her partner was?" 

Jack looked up now, shook his head no. 

He had stopped flipping and Martin, knowing the exact page the revelation was on, flipped backward once, pointed to the information at the top of the page, and waited. Jack's eyes widened and the hairs on his neck raised, perhaps more so than Martin's because he was even surer of Vincent's psychosis. 

"Vincent, " Jack said, "her partner was Vincent." 

* 

**6:05 p.m.**

They'd settled on takeout and spread the Chinese boxes in front of them. Matt had thrown his coat over her couch, grabbed a carton for himself and dug right in, his body reminding him he hadn't eaten in a day. 

She watched him and wondered how they fit together and what the world meant by putting them in each other's lives. If she had the chance, one day, she might ask. But for now, she smiled at her luck. Fate, actually. Fate had put them together. He'd been a lost soul once, had a drinking problem, no real direction, and then he'd become a cop. 

She'd been a kid for a while, then remained a kid in a relationship that took and took from her before she could get anything out of it that meant what love should mean. She'd been with a man who'd hurt her physically and emotionally and she'd left and still been a kid until she came here and became a cop and then the two of them, searching for a friend, had found each other. 

Funny how it worked like that -- fate. Sometimes it screwed you and other times, well...it just kind of worked out nicely. 

"Sam was asking me about Vietnam today, " he said, shaking his head with a painful smile. 

"Why?" Alexis wondered, sitting on a kitchen chair. 

He put down his carton, looked up, suddenly realized he'd never told Alexis about that part of his life. Shit. Well, he was in it now. 

"Because I -- I fought in Vietnam." 

"Matt, why didn't you --" 

He waved her off, picked up his lo mein again and held it in his hand. 

"It's not important." 

"It is." 

"No, it's not, " he stressed again, his voice growing louder. 

"If it wasn't important, why are you so upset?" 

"I'm not upset!" 

"You are, you're yelling, " she pointed at him, as though spotlighting his anger in direct view. 

"Lex I -- goddammit. I don't even know why I brought it up." 

"Yes, you do. You want to talk about, but you don't think you do." 

"What the hell kind of sense does that make?" 

"Matt --" 

"No, " he reiterated, waving at her again, his fork doing circles in midair. 

There were things now that she hadn't known about him. Although, in retrospect, maybe she should have. Once, it had been stifling hot. They'd been grilling a suspect in the interrogation room for hours and hours, the sweat running in beads down parts of their skin they hadn't known could sweat. Matt had rolled up his sleeves and stormed out for a moment, so hot, he said, he needed a break. For a minute, he unbuttoned the top of his shirt to let some air in and she'd seen it -- this jagged scar. Not big, really, but there. Old...old and angry and faded, but imprinted on his skin forever. 

She'd always meant to ask him about it. 

"That's where you got the scar, isn't it?" she asked gently, moving forward. 

He didn't speak and she took it as a good sign, moved forward some more, still slowly and cautiously like one might approach a strange dog. She touched his chest at the spot she remembered the scar being, rubbed a hand down his shirt. 

"It's there, Matt, right there above your heart. Your scar." 

He breathed deeply, shut his eyes, and she knelt in front of him, stroked the hair falling in his eyes. 

"Tell me, Matt, tell me..." 

He took a deep breath again and stood abruptly, shaking his head. 

"I can't. I can't now, maybe not ever. It's just -- it's just a part of my past that I want to forget so let's forget it, okay?" 

"Matt, are you sure you're not still there with that war?" 

He paused and she continued. 

"You can't -- you can't stay in the pasts with your ghosts." 

"You're so smart, aren't you?" he asked, suddenly upset again. 

"You think you know me and what I did. You think we're friends, Alexis? Well, friends stop when you ask them to stop. Just...just leave me the hell alone for a while, all right? Can you do that?" 

In all her years with him, she'd never seen this side of him. Maybe she would never understand the things he'd seen and done, but she wanted to and he wouldn't let her. This...this was all they needed now. Shit. They had a serial killer on their hands and they couldn't even keep themselves together enough to find the guy. 

Friends. 

Friends, she thought, did quite the opposite. Friends didn't stop when you asked them to if they knew you were reaching for a lifeline to pull you in. Friends...friends forgot your ghosts and exorcised your demons and left you as the only person you'd ever been. 

* 

**9:38 p.m.**

His weakness, he now knew, was Samantha. They had this...this beautiful thing between them that wasn't about sex or obligation. They were simply, perfectly, best friends. Put together almost fortuitously -- or not, he couldn't be sure -- they'd found common ground and grown together both professionally and emotionally. 

He watched her move from this guy to that guy, the sex brief and emotionless, waiting for her to just...find someone worthy of her. 

And she'd found Jack and the religious part of his mind screamed at this infidelity, wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her until she realized what she was doing. That was, until, he'd seen the look she got when she saw Jack or heard him mentioned. 

When he'd broken it off with her on that bench in Foley Square, he'd seen a look once more, the one of love for Jack and regret for what she'd done and loss...just overwhelming loss. That bench in that square...it had been so gorgeous once, angelic, almost, in its purity and beauty. 

And now...now if you walked by it or sat there long enough it...it just lost something. If you sat in Foley Square, thinking of the woman who'd cried on your shoulder asking why she always fell in love with the wrong people, you didn't think of its beauty anymore. Foley Square, that had once been so innocent and idyllic just...began to look ugly. 

So here he was, at her apartment, after being conned into helping her watch Jack's girls while he spent the night with his wife, cops monitoring the outside building. 

The girls had taken to them quickly, both of them adoring Danny's playfulness and Samantha's kindness. Together, he mused, they weren't half bad for babysitters. 

He heard giggling from the hallway and looked up from the page he'd been coloring with Hanna to see Samantha balancing Kate on her hip, rubbing a towel at her wet hair and telling her jokes or funny stories that made her laugh. 

"Danny, " Kate giggled, her knuckles pushed up against her mouth in laughter, "you slipped on ice and your shoe fell off." 

She giggled again and Samantha pointed at him, pressed her cheek against the little girl's wet hair and smiled with her, winking at Danny to play along for Kate's sake. If he had to be the butt of a joke, he'd do it this once for that sweet little face. 

"Sure did. Sam and I were walking to get hot dogs and I didn't see this piece of ice, " he spoke as he stood from his picture, Hanna now watching him with interest as well, "and I started to slip and Sam tried to grab me, but it was too late. I fell and my shoe flew off and hit Sam in the head. Fell right on my butt." 

He winked at Samantha. A wink that seemed to say, I got you, girl. 

Hanna stopped her purple crayon in midair over her Mickey Mouse drawing, glanced at Samantha with a giggle growing in her eyes. 

"It hit you in the head, Sam?" she asked, her eyes twinkling at the outrageous story the two agents had conjured up out of thin air for her and her sister. 

Samantha nodded, bouncing Kate up and down again on her hip, making her giggle even more. 

"I looked like a rhino for a week." 

"I bet daddy was laughing, " Hanna said, a smile still on her face as she went back to her coloring. 

Samantha nodded, her smile slowly slipping away. She set Kate on the ground, who promptly launched herself into Danny's arms. He smiled and fell against Samantha's couch. She'd switched the heat on, but the falling temperatures outside seemed to be permeating into the tiny apartment and Danny was glad for the sweater he'd decided to wear. 

Samantha sat down beside Hanna, crossed her legs Indian style and peered over at the girl's drawing. Hanna covered it with her hands, laid her head on top for extra protection. 

"I can't see?" she asked. 

Hanna shook her head vigorously. "It's a surprise." 

* 

Jack hadn't said much to Martin before leaving, couldn't assure him of anything or verify something he couldn't be sure of. He'd left hours ago and it stayed with him so intensely. Why, he thought, hadn't Samantha just told him when he'd asked her who her partner was? Unless...unless he'd been like his brother and done something, or tried to do something to her as well. And Samantha would have to tell him why she'd kept that fact a secret, but for now, he pushed that thought away. 

He found comfort in the knowledge that his girls were safe, he could keep a much better eye on Maria without worrying about them as well. 

Jack finished his glass of water, looked down at his clothes. It was the first time he'd worn jeans in...God, weeks, it must have been. And his sweater hadn't been worn since last winter. The clothes felt foreign to him, like they belonged to a family man. He was...well, he was just Jack Malone, FBI agent. 

He set the glass down, walked into the living room, and found Maria reading a book by the lamp. She looked up as he neared and smiled. 

"Thanks for staying, " she said, removing her reading glasses. 

"Of course, " he said, running a hand down her arm. 

Maybe they hadn't -- at least in their minds -- been married for a long time, but she knew what he wanted as he looked at her. 

"Jack, " she said, gently, "I appreciate you wanting to stay, but there's half a dozen cops, some of your agents, and a dog or two all over this place. I'm safe, I really am. You want to see the girls, go check on them. Okay. You won't sleep until you do." 

She patted his arm. 

They weren't married in their hearts, but sometimes, they still remained so in their minds. 

* 

Kate had fallen asleep before her sister and Danny had carried her into Samantha's room, tucking her in. Hanna followed soon after and asked that Samantha tuck her in. She'd clutched the blone agent's hand as they walked, smiling with a secret as they entered the bedroom. Samantha picked her up and tucked her in next to her sister, knelt down and brushed a bang out of her eye. 

"Sleep tight, " she said, smiling. 

As she turned to leave, Hanna grabbed at her arm. 

"Sam, " she whispered, "I've got a present for you. It's a Christmas present. I colored a picture for you." 

She handed the paper she'd folded to Sam, smiled with that childish innocence and Samantha melted. God, these girls were precious. 

"Thank you, honey, now get some sleep, " she smiled back. 

She put the picture on her refrigerator with one of two magnets she had and stood back to look at it for a minute. It seemed surreal to look at it. If she detached herself for a moment, she could pretend it was her own child who had drawn the picture. But, she couldn't dwell on fantasies, had to root herself in perspicacity and things that would truly happen. 

"How many people you figure ever find that one great love of their life?" Danny asked behind her. 

She shrugged. 

"Offhand? Not many. But...maybe you find someone just as good." 

"Or maybe you don't and you're unhappy." 

Samantha turned around to face him. 

"I don't know what's worse: being alone or not being able to have the one you love." 

"You've been both, you tell me." 

She shrugged again, leaned against the kitchen counter. 

"Maybe I don't know anymore. They both feel the same." 

Danny stood, moved to her. 

"Sam, Jack --" 

"Don't, Danny, just...just don't, please." 

He pulled her against him and she felt ashamed that he was doing this again for the second time that week. She didn't cry this time, though, just...breathed in the stringy fibers of his itchy sweater and sighed. 

"Sam, " his chest rumbled, "when you find your great love, just hold him like hell and don't ever let go and you'll never have to worry about either of those things again." 

A knock on the door broke them apart and Samantha's chest tightened when she opened it and standing there was Jack. She moved aside to let him in. 

"How are the girls?" he asked, pulling his hood down. Snowflakes coated his jacket and his cheeks were red with cold. 

"Great. They're asleep. They were perfect, Jack, little angels, " she said. 

He beamed with pride. 

"Thank you both, I know this is...unconventional, I just --" 

"Jack, no worries, it's fine, we're glad to help, " Danny said, waving an arm in reassurance. 

Jack wandered down the hall to peek in on his daughters and came back out, hands moving against the few scant snowflakes still clinging to his coat. 

"I'm just...really grateful for you two. Just -- this thing with Maria -- if anything happened to her, I just -- " he broke off. 

Samantha felt her chest tighten again and Danny must have noticed because he said, "Hey, Sam, why don't you get some fresh air? I saw you needed milk anyway." 

Samantha shot him a grateful look and grabbed her coat off the hook, relieved at the out she'd been given. The room suddenly seemed smaller and hotter. She pulled her winter hat over her head, wrapped her scarf around her neck and zipped her coat tightly, walking out briskly. 

Jack soon followed, caught up to her as she marched with a purpose to nowhere in particular. 

"Why'd you lie to me, Sam?" he asked loudly. 

She stopped, turned around. 

"What?" 

"You said you didn't remember who your partner was in Narcotics. It was Vincent Marro, Samantha, and you knew all along. Why did you hide it?" 

She tucked her hair further into her hat, rubbed at her already numb cheeks. 

"Because he was like that woman said Joseph was. He -- he was mean and unfeeling. He didn't give a shit. And one night, he tried to rape me and I reported him. He was put on probation, but his brother got him a lighter sentence. He couldn't work Narcotics anymore and that pissed him off, you know why? 'Cause he had this nice scam going with the local drug dealers for money. Wasn't so easy now that he couldn't work Narc anymore. Told me the last time I saw him that he wouldn't forget what I had done. So that was my partner, Jack, you happy? I need milk, " she said, walking fast again. 

"Your store's that way, Samantha, " Jack shouted above the cars whizzing by and the howling wind. 

She sighed. "I don't need milk, Jack, I need to get away from you." 

Brutal honesty, she decided, was all she had left for him now. She didn't have anything left in her to do this dance -- this lightning waltz, as Lex had called it -- with him. 

He caught up to her swift pace and grabbed her shoulder, spun her around. He'd known her for so long that her face was just normal, routine, even, to him. He'd become, in a word, numb to all the physical perfections that had first caught his eye once he'd gotten to know Samantha Spade the person. Well...not so much numb as...used to it, he guessed. If he was numb, he wouldn't feel it and now -- standing here in the freezing cold with godawful wind blowing snow on their face -- her beauty blew stars against his chest. 

"What do you want me to say, Samantha? What do I need to do?" 

"You should know, you should, " she said, shaking her head and tugging at her scarf. 

"What? What should I know?" 

"Jack! For God's sake, you -- you pulled me along. And I -- I loved you, Jack. I fucking loved you. You..." 

She trailed off for a moment, hit at his chest in anger. 

"You fucking asshole. You can't just -- you can't just do that to people. I would've given you everything I had. I did give you everything I had. And you just..." 

She continued to hit him, growing weaker with the sobs that took over her chest, rose up through her voice. 

"Christ, " she said, wiping at her eyes, "you broke my heart, Jack." 

His hands were on her arms instantly and he pulled her against him. She resisted for a moment, but he held tight until she sagged into his chest, mumbling how's and why's and asking for answers he couldn't give. 

They had this Eden, him and her, this paradise where they could forget who they were on the outside and who they knew they were all along on the inside. They had this Eden where they could be together and that...that Eden was burning. 

She finally looked up, rubbed once more at her eyes and they both leaned forward, lips touching with this raw, insatiable passion. He pushed her against the brick wall, thankful for the relatively sparse street, and felt her enter his mind and heal the holes she'd left for over a year. 

As soon as it began, it was over. 

"Jack, " she said, "you...you need to go home." 

"Sam --" 

"Shh, " she cut him off, placing a finger to her lips, tears pricking at her eyes again, "shh. Go home, Jack." 

And just like his dream, she whispered, was gone, and he was the last person on earth in a ferry that would never touch ground again. 


	18. Think You Can Tell Heaven From Hell?

**Chapter 18: Think You Can Tell Heaven from Hell?**

**Sunday, December 19, 2004 10:47 p.m.**

There were a few reasons you might be sitting at a bar late on a Sunday night; bad relationship, losing money, losing time, depressed about your team's losses or hell, your hair loss, balding, weight gain, wrinkles. There were a few reasons and she couldn't pick just one, but if she had to, she'd say...she loved a guy once who maybe didn't love her back and shit, hadn't she become what most adults were in this perpetual state of longing? 

She teased a glass of scotch, had only taken two sips, and decided alcohol just wasn't going to cut it tonight. 

Her phone rang and she pulled it from her coat, furrowed her brow at the number she didn't recognize. 

"Hello?" she asked of the voice. 

"Hello, Alexis. You might not know me, but I've been watching you. You're trying to solve my work, " the voice whispered. 

The voice was an entity entirely of itself, though it belonged to a whole person. The voice was this misanthropic misfit cast out of society that had forgotten right from wrong and decided to play by its own rules. The voice had no name. You had to be human for that. 

"Your work, " she spoke, "what a politically correct word for slaughter." 

The voice made a clicking sound. 

"Not nice, Alexis, not nice at all. Now, I have someone here who would like to talk to you." 

She could hear the phone being passed off and suddenly a new voice took over. A shaky, frightened, God-please-help me kind of voice. 

"Say your name, " the evil voice said. 

Then the scared voice spoke. 

"M-my name's S-sally Grenfield. Can you -- can you please come and get me? We're right here on 62nd Avenue. P-please?" 

Alexis shut her eyes in pain, swallowed the lump in her throat. She threw a few bills on the bar, pulled on her coat quickly and left, keeping the phone to her ear awkwardly. She took off down the street, not bothering to hail a cab that, in the sudden traffic jam gathering, would take forever to manuever merely two blocks down. 

She ran as fast as she could, the fastest she'd ever run, and a doom settled in her heart. She would get there quickly, but Sally Grenfield would be dead. He would never have let her divulge her location if he hadn't been sure of that. 

"Hey, hey, pal, " she called to the voice, hoping if she could keep him talking he might forget he was intending to kill someone. 

A silence passed for a few seconds that dragged on into years until the voice spoke again. She could've sworn, too, that she'd heard a bang go off in the distance. 

"Sally was tired, Detective Collins. When you get here -- and it's the warehouse down the alley on 62nd, just so you know -- try not to wake her, okay? I wish I could stay and chat with you, but I actually have another appointment. Two women in one night, I must be lucky, right, Alexis?" 

She went to speak again, but the click on the other end cut off any further attempts at conversation. It was perhaps the longest, most defeating run she'd ever had. As she neared the entrance of the warehouse, the smell of gunpowder stung her nose and she staggered at the entrance, putting a hand on the wall. 

Pulling out her gun and flicking on her flashlight, she neared the body of Sally Grenfield, strapped to an old hospital gurney, a bullet through her head. 

"Come out!" she shouted to the air. 

"Come out here, you son of a bitch!" 

Nothing moved, but she kept her gun poised and punched in Matt's number on her cell phone. After three unsuccessful tries, she the Lieutenant -- who promised he'd been down at the station in half an hour -- and Jeffrey Pesna who was already wide awake and offered his assistance where needed. He was damn well needed now. 

After a while, she heard distant sirens. Not wanting to contaminate any possible evidence, she'd moved as far away from the body as she could, keeping her gun raised at all times, and just watched the woman she'd spoken to on the phone mere minutes ago. 

Something bothered her suddenly. How the hell had the serial killer gotten her cell phone number? 

Unless... 

"Collins. You needed me, " Jeffrey Pesna said as he walked in, sporting gloves on his hands. 

"Yeah, got another one, " she gestured to the body in front of her. 

A team of CSUs came in behind him, evidence kits in tote, and scoured the scene. This was the freshest murder they'd seen in a long time and it was troubling to all, most especially Alexis. 

Jeffrey stepped next to her, shaking his head. 

"Shit, you must have gotten here almost immediately after she died, " he said, pulling at the latex around his fingers. 

She nodded stoically, a swarm of emotions invading her body so heavily she couldn't be open to all of them or she would sink, right now, to her knees. 

"He called me, " she said, distantly, her voice a flat line of numbness. 

"What?" Jeffrey turned his head to look at her, suddenly noticing for the first time how hollow her eyes were. 

"The killer, he -- he got a hold of my cell number somehow and called me. He put her, " she pointed at the body, "on the phone, made her beg me to find her. I -- I heard a gun go off and by the time I got here --" 

He moved to her quickly, hand on her shoulder, "It wasn't your fault, come on, this guy's a sick bastard. He's playing with you, with all of us. He was going to kill her anyway, it's not your fault." 

She nodded absently. 

"And how the hell did he get a hold of your cell number?" 

She shrugged. 

"All right, after we brush over the scene, we'll track your call log and see what we can dig up." 

Silence answered him and he brushed his shoulder against her, nudging her lightly from a nightmarish fog. 

"Hey, come on. It's not your fault." 

The words, repeated so profusely, rang empty now -- empty and meaningless. Suddenly, a thought came to her. 

"Oh, God, Jeffrey, he said he had other business to take care of, talked about how lucky he was that he could kill two women tonight. He's going after another woman." 

He nodded gravely, spoke to a few uniforms that had followed him, dispatched them, and called in for more backup. 

"They're searching the city. We can't do anything right now but clean up this scene." 

He nudged her forward with his gentle words and she cringed at the 's' carved in Sally Grenfield's chest. It was deep and long and would have killed her, she supposed, even without a bullet to her head. 

That knowledge, however, wouldn't ease her guilt. She wouldn't be sleeping tonight, or for a long time. 

Sally Grenfield's scared voice begging her to find her would echo in her heart and mind until the day of her own death. 

* 

If you sit, sit in a chair or...a bench -- a bench, a sturdy bench -- long enough, you see yourself in mirrors. Some of the mirrors are normal, like the one in your bathroom or dressing rooms. Some are distorted like the ones in a circus. You see yourself, all of yourself; how you were at five and ten, as a teenager and young adult; you see yourself as how you already are and how you might be. 

Jack sometimes saw that little boy he once was, the one who cocked his head to the side and thought to ask his father one day why mom was sitting on the back porch smoking cigarettes she hid in her purse, crying about things he wouldn't understand until he was an adult and felt, himself, the absurdity of a cold ring that tended to slip off his finger anymore now if he wasn't careful. 

Jack remembered being sixteen and finding his mom, for the first time, in the garage. 

_Why are you crying, Ma, what's wrong?_

The walk home, the walk away from Samantha's apartment, was slow and long. Her words burned in his head, her tears stung his lips. 

_Ma, what's wrong? _

Nothing, Jack, nothing. I'm just -- honey, let's...let's not tell anyone about this all right? It'll be our secret, okay? We like having secrets together, you and I? Remember when you were little and I used to tell you secrets and we'd have that special thing -- just us? Just don't tell anyone... 

Sixteen. Sixteen was old enough to know that...people could be unhappy. So unhappy sometimes that they -- they just couldn't stay where they were. They were tired of sitting in a chair or on a hard bench watching themselves in mirrors that cracked with age and hollow screams. He should have known these things at sixteen, but he was too busy cleaning his own mirror for a time. 

And he missed her most at Christmas. She had this way, this special way of decorating the house and making it warm and friendly and cooking the turkey just right for their huge family. The first Christmas that her stocking wouldn't adorn their fireplace was the first one he realized just how much he loved those things about her. He missed the way she messed up his hair when he would stand in front of their tree; the way she'd sneak up behind him and wrap a choking arm around his neck until he guessed who it was. He missed her most when he forgot what her perfume smelled like and how she used to do up her hair for church. 

The first Christmas she was gone he had made a wish in church. It would be the last time he went to church for many, many years, save for the time he was obligated to be there by his marriage. 

_I haven't been the best son, I know that. If I was a good son, I would've...I would've kept her from dying. But I -- I miss her so much and I...it's Christmas. And I just...I just want my mom back, even if it's just once and only for a little while. I just want to...I just want to see her smile..._

How young he had been then. With his knees bent over the hard kneeler in church, hands folded over the old wooden pew, there he'd knelt and asked for something he'd known, even as he said it, wouldn't come true. Then he had gone to war and he couldn't kneel quite like that anymore. 

When he finally reached his home, he was satisfied to see the very alert police still guarding his house, nodded to them, and walked through his front door. His hands were numb, his body chilling. He looked down at himself and realized he was still wearing his work suit, nothing else. He hadn't even put a coat on. 

The house was quiet and dim and Maria had gone to bed. A fog came over him and he felt surreal here all of a sudden, like he had a feeling that this would be the last time he could walk in this house as her husband. 

Tugging at his tie, he threw it casually on the nearest chair, padded softly against the carpet and reached her door in silence. Once there, he pressed one hand on the wood, the other on the knob, and turned slowly as he pushed, stepping in with just enough room. 

And there, in the darkness, he is the same man he's been since he was sixteen and sat on his own private bench, watching himself in mirrors and wanting to get up when those mirrors started to crack just like his mother's. 

In the darkness, he's Jack Malone. Jack Malone whose great regret was always loving some people too much, too much he had to stop loving them -- and loving others...loving others not enough, not nearly enough. 

Maria was turned to him, her face a mixture of anxiety and peacefulness, her comforter pulled tightly to her chin. 

He stood next to bed, ran a hand against her comforter, through her hair and against her skin. 

Then...then he knelt beside the bed and her, hands atop the sheets. 

"I'm sorry, " he whispered at once. 

"I'm just -- I'm just so sorry, " he spoke again, his voice breaking but staying so quiet he could barely hear himself. 

"This -- this wasn't the life I wanted, Maria, I wanted -- I wanted everything I couldn't have when I was a kid. I wanted to love my wife so much she wouldn't have to hide her smoke and cry alone. I wanted my kids to see me all the time, so much they were sick of me...." 

He folded his hands, flipped them over and through each other. 

"This wasn't the life I wanted, Maria. I wanted to give you something you could smile about. I wanted...I wanted my faith because I haven't had it for so long. And I thought I could get it back if I had a good family, if I had this faith in family. But I wasn't strong enough." 

She stirred a little, her eyes opening slightly and looking up at him in confusion. 

"I'm sorry, " he repeated for the last time. 

Maria stared at him for a moment, a stark understanding of everything coming over her. Then she pulled an arm out from underneath the comforter, squeezed his hand, and smiled sadly. 

"It's okay, Jack. Just -- just kiss me goodbye." 

He stood, wiped a few tears from his cheek, and kissed her forehead. He closed the door quietly and sat on the couch, hands dangling between his knees, head bent back against the cushion. 

If you sat in a chair or on a bench, stayed in one place long enough, you saw the person you had been, the person you were, the person you wanted to be; saw the people around you and thought about who they were and how their own reflections melded with yours. 

If you stayed in one place long enough, you stayed the same age forever and your life passed you by. 

* 

She had stolen money from her mother once. Had stolen it to run away from that house on Payton St., away from him and even her mother, because she lived there, and the irony of it wasn't lost on her. A moment of indecision had kept her still on that icy tile for a few minutes, her heart pounding as she pictured her father stumbling through the garage after a binge and finding her there. 

But she'd done it and made it to the bus stop in the next town. It wasn't a long walk and it gave her time to think about where she was going. She had originally planned to take the first train possible, but decided to sit on the decision until morning, give her mind time to think about everything. 

Her brother lived in Manhattan, she knew. She had spoken to him as much as she could, but then she stopped eventually when he started sounding like their father and it scared her. It scared her that the boy who had once stood in front of her to deflect their father's angry tantrums, the boy who had cringed in disgust at the drunken mess their father had become -- that this boy had become the man who sickened him years ago. 

And she felt so very alone. 

She had this picture in her mind of her brother as she sat in the bus stop on a warm summer night. Samantha had seen quite a few veterans come back from Vietnam. Most moved away, but one had stayed. He lived next door and had known her brother in high school. She remembered him giving her piggy back rides as a kid. When he'd returned, she'd walk by there sometimes and see him standing on the front porch, his clothes needing to be washed, a bottle of beer next to him, cigarette dangling from his mouth. 

Sometimes she'd smile to him and he'd smile back and one day he asked her about guns and what she thought of them. Well, I don't like some guns, Patrick. 

Which ones? he'd asked. The bad ones, she'd said, the ones that kill. 

_They all kill, Sammy, they all kill..._

She touched the hilt of her gun now, ran her fingers along the barrel. That nickname reminded her of her father and Patrick Morrisey, the guy who'd once slipped her a five-dollar bill for candy and ice cream and took her trick-or-treating with her brother. 

_Stay away from guns, kid, they're no good for anybody. You go near one, you can't walk away from the screams of the dead..._

Okay, Patrick, okay, she'd said, and walked away. Some time later, she'd walked by that house and he wasn't on the front porch, so she'd continued down her street to the bus stop, climbed on the bus and covered her ears the entire way to school. She'd heard a gun, she thought, a gun quiet and sinister and meant for death. She never saw Patrick Morrisey on that porch again and sometimes she missed his laugh. 

She'd sat in the bus stop, scared to death her brother would become that, scared to death of being alone, scared to death about what would happen to her mother in that house with their father by herself. 

Eventually, she'd made it to New York and joined the NYPD, moved up to Narcotics, and was paired with Vincent Marro, who she'd known little about. As time passed, she became aware of where the money he'd been making came from. He had been making money off the drugs they busted, reselling them on the streets. He caught her spying one time, slapped her around a bit to scare her. Her brother found out and helped her push a probation and transfer for him. Before it could fall through, he had tried to rape her. He'd finally gotten transferred and temporarily suspended for his actions and forgotten about her for a while. 

She'd always figured his brother had helped with the light sentence he was given, seeing as he was a Lieutenant and friends with the Chief. 

As she stayed lost in her thoughts for a moment, a man came up behind her, hit her on the back of the head. Before she fell to the darkness, she heard a voice say, "You'll be paying for what you did soon, bitch..." 

* 

Second chances tended to be few and far between and even the best of people weren't granted them, so if you got a second chance, you had to feel as though you were living on borrowed time because that's what it was. Everyday was a gift and if you forgot that, even for a minute, it would be a waste. 

He'd found second chances in big and small things; in being able to wake up without a hangover; have a license he could keep; get a job he could enjoy and help people through; find his sister again and be the brother he hadn't been for so long. 

And then there was his partner. God, was he an asshole. She'd wanted to talk, to help him, and he had to be so damn stubborn, let himself rise into that agitated state where no one could talk to him, not even her. 

He finally stumbled into his apartment, drunk with fatigue, and played his blinking message. 

"Matt? Matt, it's me. Listen, I'm uh, I'm down at the station, we've...God, we've got another one. Shit." 

Her voice was trembling and laced with tears and he wanted to reach through the speakers and pull her into a hug. 

"It was my fault. I should've -- maybe I should've called for backup, I don't know. I just -- I was at a bar and the killer, Matt, the fucking killer called me on my cell and had his victim, this woman, talk to me, tell me her name and where they were and beg me to find her..." 

Shit, Lex. Christ Almighty, he thought. 

"But she was almost gone, she was, I know, I saw the way he mangled her chest, but I just -- he shot her, I heard it. Maybe...maybe she could've made it, I don't know. I don't know anything right now. I'm tired of this, of all of it. Anyway, I'm heading to the lab, you don't have to come in right now, I'm working with Pesna. If we get anything positive, I'll give you a call." 

The message ended and he picked up his phone to call her, to no avail. If she'd left for the lab by now, she would have turned it off. She didn't leave it on when she went there. 

His heart broke for her and how he'd already hurt her himself. He should've been the one she could trust to never hurt her. And he'd broken that unwritten vow, and it broke him now. And he realized it then, in the dark of his apartment. 

God, if she wasn't the reason he remembered to live each day. 

* 

**12:31 a.m.**

When he'd sent her on a walk with Jack, he hadn't intended for her to be gone so long. He thought they'd step outside for a while and be back. He'd dozed off for a little, woken up to find her still gone and now...now, he was starting to worry. 

Danny stood, looked down the hallway at the girls to be sure they were still asleep, and picked up Samantha's phone to dial her cell. Odd. When he received no answer, the anxiety rose. He tried Martin, though he didn't know why. 

He was surprised to learn that she was there and hung up the phone slowly, in deep thought. Samantha, he thought, don't do anything stupid. 

* 

She was grateful for Martin's gentle touch as he dabbed at her cut. It was so small and she felt lucky for it. She certainly didn't feel like explaining it to anyone, much less Jack. But she knew she would have to, given the circumstances and what he had said. 

Martin watched her with worry as she recanted what had happened and what her attacker voiced to her. 

"Could it have been the serial killer?" 

"Why would he be targeting me? And, if it was him, he would have killed me, not let me go. This guy was just threatening me." 

Martin pressed a small pack of ice to her head, held up a finger at what she'd said, and made a phone call. He nodded a few times at the phone, then hung up shortly after he'd first initiated the call. 

"Shit, " he said. 

"What?" 

"Kenneth Mercel was released, we didn't have enough to hold him." 

"Why wouldn't they tell us?" 

"I have no idea, but he might have been the one to attack you. We've got to find him. And, I'm calling Jack." 

She froze as he picked up the phone. This was all she needed. In the interlude, she reflected on Martin because he was there, thought of how far they'd come and the feelings he'd danced around with her. She could need him, she thought. She really could. Winter was cold and summer hot enough and there were always plenty of days to keep them in sync for a while. She could need him, really, except that...she really couldn't. 

"He's coming over." 

"Martin --" 

"Listen, I can't argue with him, he sounded pretty worried." 

She conceded and he grabbed the blanket from his couch, wrapped it around her shoulders. 

"I'm going to be in my room, watching television, pretending not to be here. So if you need me, talk to Jack, " he winked, hugged her, and left, shutting his bedroom door behind him. 

* 

When Jack arrived, she had fallen against the couch with the blanket spread over her legs. He was wearing a coat this time, she noticed, and shook the snowflakes from the sleeves, moved to her as fast as he could without seeming to be too noticeably upset. 

"Are you all right?" he asked, his dark eyes shining with worry as he rubbed the bump on her head softly. 

She nodded, patted the cushion next to her and he swallowed, seemingly grateful she was allowing him even this. 

He looked pained about something, something he had been suffering through for a long time, something she had never seen before. 

"Jack, " she spoke, "what's wrong?" 

"My mother, " he breathed after a beat. 

"But your mother --" 

"She's dead, yeah, but she -- forget it. I just wanted to make sure you were okay." 

She waved at him, her emotions rising. 

"No, Jack, no way. You can't lie to me. I see your pain. Tell me." 

He shook his shoulders, looked at her hands and ran a finger down her palm. 

"She killed herself, Sam. She just -- she promised she wouldn't the first time I found her, but she did. And I missed her so much and it scared me when I forgot how her lasagna smelled and how her hair looked after it was washed. It scared me when I forgot her." 

Tears pricked at his eyes and she closed her hand around his hand, pulled it to her tightly. 

"When I met Maria, she was so smart, but...shy and lonely and she had this sadness in her eyes that...that...God, made me think of my mother. And I fell in love with her and what I thought she could be and I didn't want her to be my mother, I tried so hard to make sure she wouldn't. And, Sam, I just miss my mom." 

She wiped at his tears with her free hand. 

"You know, I used to think about how it would have been for her in that car. She wouldn't have died right away, she would have been sitting in there for a few minutes, at least. She would have had time to think about things. And I used to wonder what she might have thought about. If she'd thought about my father and how young she had been, how she might have changed her life if she had the chance. He was such a mean man, my father, I don't think he loved her at all. And I used to wonder if she would have thought of me and...and how I had let her down, " he choked on his last few words. 

"Jack, " she spoke, "that's not true. You didn't let her down." 

She unclasped their hands, pulled her against him fully now until his cheek was resting against her stomach and she could feel his sobs through to her heart. She ran a hand through his hair, thought of how much she'd been wanting him to cut it, and now embracing the long strands she could hold onto as she soothed her way through his pain. 

"Don't you see?" she asked. 

"She was lonely from the day she met your father. And you, Jack, you saved her from the moment you were born, kept saving her everyday you were alive. You saved her as much as you could, for as long as you could. She just decided...she decided she couldn't ask it of you anymore. You know what she was thinking in her last moments? She was thinking about her son Jack and this great man he would be someday." 

Samantha spoke the words and held him, rocked him a little. She meant the words for him, but couldn't absorb the context. In reality, Doris Malone may have loved Jack very much but she had done the most selfish thing she could do. And she had to have known he would blame himself. It made her mad, in a way, but she brushed that away and continued hugging Jack. 

He moved a hand up to her heart, held it there. I think I might love you forever, he thought. 

* 

**12:57 a.m.**

She had called Matt to let him know what they'd found. Days and days of agonizing over who had done it, and the answer was staring them in the face. The prints, the blood, the semen from the previous victim, they all pointed to one man: Vincent Marro. 

Jack's team had been searching for a serial killer all along. 

Jeffrey, surprisingly, wasn't that fazed by the results. As though he had known all along, somehow, that his partner was capable of something heinous like that. It troubled him, certainly, that he'd been paired with such a lunatic. 

They had reached the station because she'd wanted to tell Lieutenant Marro in person that his brother was a serial killer. It wouldn't be easy, but the evidence was daunting against him. And the evidence didn't lie. 

"Lieutenant Marro, " she said, without sitting down, "Detective Pesna and I ran the crime scene with forensics and followed them to the lab. We were able to get positive matches for all of our evidence." 

"And?" he asked, hands folded pensively on his desk. 

"And, sir, your brother is the killer. Given the previous prints we traced to Kenneth Mercel, we believe him to be an accomplice." 

"Why not the other way around?" 

"Because, sir, he left the actual murder weapon at the crime scene this time and Vincent's prints are all over it. I found a pin of his on one of the murder victims and given the previous expertise the killer used in cleaning up the crime scenes, it's more likely that Vincent would be the killer and not Mercel, " Jeffrey contributed. 

"I see, " Joseph said, breaking his hands apart. 

"Our problem here would be...my brother is still missing. The fact that you've discovered the identity of the killer doesn't help the fact the the murders will still carry on unless we apprehend him." 

"Yes, sir, we're aware of that. It would be a problem otherwise, but your brother, as you know, made contact with me earlier this evening, " she said, shuddering at the conversation they'd had, "and he recently contacted me again, gave me the address of his whereabouts." 

"And you believe him?" 

"Well, sir, if he's not there then we'll have to think of something else. It's worth it to check it out." 

Joseph nodded and stood, pulled a coat on. 

"I'd like to join the both of you, if you don't mind." 

"Of course not, sir. I'd like to call my partner real quick before we shove off." 

He nodded and she stood aside, left a message on Matt's answering machine, closed her phone, and joined the two men as they left the station and headed for the abandoned warehouse in the Lower East Side. 

* 

He was certain that Alexis would be okay, given that she had both Jeffrey Pesna and Lieutenant Marro with her. But as partners, you couldn't entirely trust anyone that wasn't you to watch your partner's back. And he wouldn't sleep until he knew she was all right and Vincent Marro was finally given the justice he deserved. 

Danny had called him with the news of Samantha's attack and Kenneth Mercel's release. They'd apprehended him again quickly and Matt decided to go in and see how it went and also to check up on Samantha. 

He hadn't been into the FBI offices in quite a while. Samantha sat at the conference table in casual clothes, haggard and worn out, but managed a smile for him. He hugged her and walked into Jack's office, shutting the door behind him. 

"Jack, " he said, "How have you been?" 

They shook hands as Jack replied, "Not bad, Matt, you?" 

"My partner's bringing in the scum that's kept us all up for the past week, I'd say I'm doing okay. You taking the first punch at the piece of shit who hit my sister?" 

Jack chuckled. 

"Wish I could, but I'd like to keep my job." 

Matt nodded. 

"Everything okay with your wife?" 

"Looks like it will be now. She's sleeping, we've still got guards just in case." 

"Besides that Jack, how are things with your wife?" he asked, raising his eyebrow pointedly. 

Jack sighed. 

"We...we did the best we could. But it's over." 

Matt nodded again. "And how does Samantha fit into this?" 

"She's...she's kept me sane." 

Matt smiled now. "Look, Jack, I'll be honest. I'm not a fan of affairs, but I understand the circumstances of what transpired here. Regardless, Samantha's my sister and I don't take it lightly when she calls me in tears at three in the morning. So, I gotta say, I wasn't real happy with you for a while. But, you're all right, Jack. You just -- you've got to let her go or keep her." 

Jack nodded and Matt was gone. 

* 

By chance or dumb luck, they'd found Kenneth Mercel and brought him in with handcuffs. Jack stood in front of him now, face like a barracuda preparing to eat its prey. 

"You hit her, didn't you?" he said. 

Kenneth remained silent. 

"Didn't you, you son of a bitch!?" he spat now. 

Kenneth's cuffed hands twitched in their bonds, his eyes darted around the room. Jack, now equipped with the knowledge that Vincent Marro was the serial killer and Kenneth, most likely the accomplice, leaned down and prepared to launch his first attack. 

"We know you helped kill those women, Kenneth, we've got your prints. We brought Vincent in already and he's saying you did it all." 

Kenneth swallowed hard, looked to Danny Taylor who stood still, too still, in the corner. 

"N-no, no I didn't." 

Danny moved in now. 

"We're going to fry you, Kenny, hear your skin sizzle. You killed those women and you're going down for it." 

"Okay, okay. I -- I helped him. He uh, he came to me, said he'd put me away for my drug dealing unless I helped him Plus, uh, he got rid of my girlfriend for me and she was such a pain in the ass." 

"So you'd rather be put away for murder than drug dealing?" 

"Look, he said his brother was a Lieutenant, chummy with the Chief, and we'd get out fine." 

Danny and Jack exchanged worried glances. 

"Joseph's in on this too?" Danny asked. 

Kenneth nodded. 

Shit. 

Jack waved Danny out to tell Matt what was going on and get to his partner. 

"Why was he targeting my wife?" 

"Your wife? Shit. That was just a little detour for his real victim." 

"And who is that?" 

"Samantha Spade. He likes the names that start with 'S', you know? I think he really hates her, talked about her all the time and how she'd messed up his life and he'd get her back one day." 

Jack clutched the table, suddenly lightheaded. But Samantha was safe and they'd get Vincent even if Joseph was in on it too. She would be safe. She would be. Oh, God. She had to be. He realized how truly over his marriage was when the idea of something happening to Samantha scared him more than the idea of something happening to Maria. 

"Where is he?" 

Kenneth was silent. 

"Tell me where the fuck he is!" 

"That's a surprise, " Kenneth whispered, a smile forming on his face. 

* 

**1:49 a.m.**

The idea that it would all be over soon eased the guilt from her mind, but only slightly. As they exited the car, she kept her gun at the ready, suddenly wished she had been able to speak to Matt in person before she actually walked into this shindig. But, he had said he'd take her out to breakfast and that was enough for now. They could make amends and continue on like they always had. 

It was so dark and she fumbled with her flashlight in one hand, gun in the other. She would have prefferred using both hands to aim the gun, but she had to settle for this or she wouldn't even be able to see what she was shooting at. 

The Lieutenant had suggested they split up, though she'd been reluctant to agree. Now, she was regretting it even more. Suddenly, time seemed to separate the spectrums of her world as she heard a gun go off close to where she stood. 

Alexis spun her flashlight around in all directions, couldn't see anyone. Her heart thudded in her chest. 

From the entrance, Matt pulled up as fast as he could, four cops behind him. As they entered, he waved them into different directions as they heard the shot go off. He felt a knot tighten in his stomach, hoping to God he could see his partner, know she was safe. 

He hadn't heard a gun in so long. And his conversation with Alexis spawned memories of the war. He was standing here in the warehouse, freezing his ass off, carrying a pistol in the jungles of Vietnam. The world seemed to tilt on its axis for a little while and he could hear footsteps now. 

Don't shoot, a voice inside him said. Don't shoot unless you know who's there. First rule. 

"Matt!" A voice shouted from somewhere, somewhere in the pit of shadows. 

"Matt, help me!" 

He heard the footsteps coming closer and closer and spun and fired. The body fell and he searched for a flashlight, cursed himself that he hadn't brought one with him. He felt for a flashlight on the person he'd shot and, finding one, flipped the switch. 

Upon seeing who he had shot, the light dropped from his hands, rolled on the ground. 

"Detective Spade, sir! Detective Pesna's dead and we've apprehended Lieutenant Marro. Detective, we've got him in handcuffs." 

There was a Heaven and a Hell on earth. The bad people went to Hell, the good ones to Heaven and that was all we seemed to know before we died. He had killed his own partner, felt for the pulse that was no longer there on her neck, saw the blood he had caused, and wondered where he'd be. Nowhere. He couldn't tell Heaven from Hell anymore. 

_Men kill, Matt..._

Oh, God. 

_Men kill..._

Fucking Christ. He touched her hair, her face, looked at his hands in the beam of light. The blood. The fucking blood. They didn't tell you that when you joined. They didn't tell you about the blood. About how it would never go away. They don't tell you when you become a cop that the blood never washes out, that you see it in your sleep, when you eat, when you talk and move and breathe and you try to wash it out but you rub so hard all you get is more blood and suddenly you realize it won't ever go away. 

It started snowing outside again and he had blood on his hands and all he knew was that when it started to snow in December, he would bleed with her again. 

So he sat there with her and the blood that had once been in her and vomited. 


	19. Goodbyes and Epitaphs

**Chapter 19: Goodbyes and Epitaphs**

In brief glances and extended remembrance, their time together fell somewhere between the cold starkness of reality and the stuff of dreams. Maybe because they spent the better part of their lives fighting for themselves and each other beyond any means of comprehension and they lost themselves before they started. 

And other times, because, he let himself see her and she let him look. 

And they met and become whole above any normal measure, as though even the fallible constraints of humanity couldn't sever what they had built. 

They had built a foundation of trust and hope, and even love, as he thought of it now; love that he struggled admitting to himself, let alone her, but love that existed somewhere between the false touch of forced love and the love you couldn't have. 

It wasn't the lies that hurt so much as the truth -- truth so bitter and biting you couldn't escape it until it became you and nothing made sense -- not the life you once had, not the life you even wanted. 

It wouldn't be the same again, because scars never really faded. 

But he thought of him and her and their time together -- how perfect it was, how perfect it could still be. 

Jack thought of how they fit together -- and they were beautiful. 

* 

Not much could be understood from her brother's incoherent speech. What she could gather was that Lex was dead, shot. The rest fell between the sobs of unintelligent gibberish. She wanted to be there for him, watch over him, but with Vincent Marro apparently still on the outside, that wasn't an option, at least not now. 

Jack looked a little loose, like he might go over the edge and she appreciated his worry, but didn't want to be smothered by it. They needed to catch the guy, yet using herself as bait wasn't even a possibility in his mind. But it needed to happen, it did. It was the only way. 

"Jack, " she said, approaching him carefully, "you have to let me do this. You know we have to catch this guy, you know he's after me." 

"Sam --" he started, hand digging into his pocket. 

"Jack, I'll be careful." 

He sighed. 

"We have to end this." 

"I just want you back safe, " he whispered. 

She nodded and ran a hand down his arm, assuring him she would be all right. 

She had come here so long ago, fresh, ready to do something for the world. Humans and their misgivings and life in general, she surmised, had stripped her of that previous idealism. She'd met Jack and ridden a wave that rose and fell like the tides. She had come with a love for him and been sure of it, then unsure, then just completely sure of its end. And now...now it seemed here for the taking, but she didn't know if she had it in her anymore to try. 

* 

When he was alone, when the rest of the world was stripped away, Danny Taylor stopped feeling like Danny Taylor and more like the kid, sometimes, that he'd once been. He liked that feeling -- that feeling like nothing bad could happen and you'd come home from little league, Mom would be in the kitchen cooking up some pork and biscuits and all those foods that made you feel warm and loved. 

When he was alone, he liked to pretend he still had his mom. It felt warm again. He hadn't been the only child to ever lose his mother, sure. God knew kids went through some shit, some kind of shit that he'd seen himself and couldn't comprehend even an adult being able to walk away from; even an adult who was about as stable as you could get. 

Some things, some things happened that you just couldn't shake off and that's what his mother was. He couldn't shake her off. Mainly, he thought, because he'd been in that car with her. Been with her as his father yelled and he heard that horrible sound he made when he did it, that horrible sound of his mother falling step by step to the ground. 

Then the sound of metal hitting metal, then screaming, then nothing. 

Nothing at all. 

That was the worst sound. The sound of silence. So quiet, you couldn't even hear breathing. 

So he had grown up, grown up fast, and tried to make sense of himself. He wanted, most of all, a family, just one person he could look at and say, Yeah, that's home. He found it in Samantha, he thought. Funny, but yeah, that was her. She was his best friend, his sister, his partner, the one who understood him. 

He had Vivian too, who reminded him of the aunt he'd stopped seeing when he was five, the one he finally realized a year later had died, but he was a kid and well, kids don't need to know those things, right? He would've liked too, liked to have said goodbye. 

That's the thing, the thing that hurt most. 

In all his losses, his aunt, his grandmother, father, mother -- he'd never, not even once, said goodbye. 

He didn't know why, and it seemed so long now that goodbye would feel strange and foreign, like saying hello an hour into a date. 

Danny didn't like losing, had started hating it, in fact, when he'd lost his parents. Couldn't stand to lose a game, a trophy, a race, a case. He could afford to give himself to his cases completely so he _wouldn't_ lose them. 

He hadn't lost someone in a long time, hadn't lost someone who he depended on to keep him here, to keep him focused and alive. If you stripped away Samantha and Vivian, Martin and Jack, what did you have? 

Loss -- loss wasn't something he could deal with again, couldn't face head on. He decided tonight, for no real reason other than being tired and maybe a little too introspective for three a.m. on a Saturday night, that he would secure his family to the end, if that's what it took. 

Because he didn't _want_ to have to say goodbye. He didn't want it at all. 

* 

**2:36 a.m.**

She had been contacted by phone and told where to go. The drive from the office to Queens seemed agonizingly long. The minutes allowed too much time for holes in their plan and what could happen if this and that weren't done right. Danny was the only bright spot on the drive, actually. 

"It's one of my favorite movies." 

"_It's a Wonderful Life_?" 

"Yeah. It is, you know. It is a wonderful life." 

"Getting sentimental on me?" 

He pointed to himself mockingly. "Me? Never." 

"Huh." 

" 'Huh' what?" 

"Well, you like Al Pacino and those other rough guys, I would've figured you for a...blood and guts guy." 

"I'm a guy, Sam, it doesn't mean I can't have a heart too." 

She smiled at him. "You're one of the few, Danny, one of the few." 

"So, we're exchanging gifts?" he asked. 

"I might as well tell you because you're going to get it out of me before Christmas anyway. And...it's only five days away. I actually got you _It's a Wonderful Life_ on tape, you were asking for it." 

"Great, we can watch it on Christmas Eve. And I got you ice skates." 

She looked at him in confusion. "Ice skates? Why?" 

"Because you don't know how to skate and I'm going to teach you. And there's two tickets to a Christmas symphony sitting on my desk and since you're a lazy New Yorker who hasn't seen a symphony in Radio City Music Hall yet, I've got to take you." 

She reached over and hugged him briefly. 

He stopped the car a few blocks ahead of the intended destination to give her room enough to approach Vincent Marro without him suspecting cops around. But Danny didn't think for a moment that the guy didn't know there would be cops. 

He knew Martin was holed up in the ghost bar next to him. Jack and Vivian were ten minutes away, camped out in a van with other agents. Danny was there to watch her back implicitly and watch it, he did, waiting until she was far enough ahead of him before he exited the car as quietly as he could. 

Pulling the hood of his gray hoodie over his head, he stuffed his hands in his pocket, gun in his right hand, and sauntered down the darkened street slowly. He could still see her figure as he kept his head to the ground, told himself there was no way in hell this guy would touch a hair on her head. 

It seemed to drag on forever until she reached the spot. Vincent was waiting, dressed in a tux with flowers. What a sick bastard. He handed them to her, but she swatted them away. She could feel Danny behind her, though he'd hidden behind a wall for now. The wires on her chest itched for a moment and she would only keep Danny away long enough to get a confession out of this guy. 

"It's been a while, Samantha. I see you've joined the FBI." 

"Yeah, Vincent. You've kept us busy this week." 

"It's 'Vincent' now? I miss 'Vinny', but it will have to do. So tell, Samantha, did you like my artwork?" 

She turned away momentarily. 

"You son of a bitch." 

"I hear Detective Collins is dead. Pity. I was having a little fun with her. Now, I'm going to have some fun with you." 

"What are you going to do to me?" she asked, hoping he would admit it here and now so they could save time in an interrogation room with bullshit lawyers getting him off with light sentences. 

"What I did to them." 

"Who's them, Vinny?" she used his nickname, hoping to throw him off by it. 

"Come now, Samantha, I am a cop, you know? I know what you're doing. And it won't work. I won't say their names. You probably have enough to tie me to it anyway, put me in jail for a good twenty years, at least." 

She pursed her lips. "Was it worth it, asshole, what you did?" 

"It was. It really was. But, you see, I have one more letter to go until 'You all lose' and that letter is you, Samantha. You're my last, my perfect one." 

Her hand moved in the signal and Vincent pulled her against him, gun to her head. Danny ran to them, his own gun drawn now too. 

"Put the gun down, Vincent, put it down. Come on. You kill a federal agent, you're going to fry." 

"But it would be so much fun, Agent Taylor, " he spoke, pressing the gun closer to her temple. 

Danny calculated the situation. It was a slim chance, but a chance he would have to take. Either way, Samantha might die. If it worked, he could save her and it would be worth it. Lowering his gun slightly, he managed to throw Vincent off for a split second and make his move. He launched himself against the guy and they rolled for a minute. 

The gun went off and the bullet grazed a vein in Samantha's arm and she stumbled against the wall from the impact. Danny knocked Vincent to the ground, for good, he thought, and rushed to Samantha to inspect her wound. 

Back turned, he didn't notice Vincent falter back to his feet. When he turned around, Vincent's gun was level with Samantha's head. He pulled the trigger and fired and Danny jumped in front of it. 

Samantha, slightly dizzy from blood loss, raised her gun shakily and fired. Vincent fell back, blood mixing with the freezing snow that had begun to fall. Martin, distantly, started running towards them. 

She couldn't have cared less at the moment about her arm injury, but panic at Danny's immediately set in and she fell towards him, pulled him against her as she sat on the concrete. He'd been wearing a vest, just like she, but the bullet had hit at the base of his neck. 

Merry Christmas, he wanted to say. 

You're my best friend, he wanted to say. 

Don't forget me; don't worry about me; it doesn't hurt too much; watch movies and laugh and cry; learn how to ice skate and see the symphony; I'm scared, I'm really, really scared, he wanted to say. 

He couldn't manage those words, not in his wildest imagination. She held him like a child, pulled him as close as she could and held him, ignoring the lightheaded feeling overcoming her, the pain in her arm, the tears blurring her vision. 

"Danny, " she choked, "you're my best friend, my family. Don't -- you're going to be fine." 

She sobbed at his wheezing, labored breaths. And despite his own obvious pain, he still wore a goofy smile, though it shook with effort and she thought it might be the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. 

"It's okay, honey, it's okay. W-we're all right." 

She rocked him, the blood soaking her clothes and the concrete, the snow building around them. 

Martin reached them, checked for a pulse on Vincent and upon finding none, knelt before Danny. He'd contacted Jack and Vivian when he'd heard the shots, mentioned there was an agent down and pulled the radio from his ear, not wanting to worry about communicating every little detail to them right now. They would get here soon enough. 

Danny's final breaths came quickly and spasmed. 

"Michaelangelo, Danny -- he's going to paint you Heaven." 

His hand, shaking violently, traveled to her cheek where she clutched it tightly and he spoke, with raspy breaths, the only thing he could. 

"G-goodbye." 

And softly, he drifted away. 

* 

Hearing that an agent was down, without verification of that agent, left Jack going out of his mind. He imagined it being Samantha, seeing as she was the intended target. They had been unable to hear what transpired after Vincent took Samantha at gunpoint; the wires got unattached somehow. 

They drove as fast as they could, ambulance siren blaring in front of them. When they reached the spot, he saw the saddest thing he might have ever seen in...well, a long while, anyway. Christ. Vincent was dead, Samantha was covered in blood and Danny, cradled in her arms, had his eyes shut, his neck bloodied. 

The paramedics eased him up first, covered him with a sheet as they did so. Jack hurried to Samantha, stood next to the paramedic who asked her, "Ma'am, where are you hurt?" 

"H-his blood, " she said, "it's his." 

"Ma'am, are you hurt?" 

Her arms, soaked in blood, were spread out on the snow, her eyes: empty. 

"My arm, " she finally spoke, "my r-right arm." 

And then, the tears came back. She fell forward into Jack's waiting arms. 

"Shh, shh, it's all right, baby, it's all right." 

He lifted her gently, laid her on the awaiting stretcher. She was restless while they tried to put an I.V. in and they sedated her. Jack kept her hand tightly between his, brought it to his lips as she slipped into a sleep that would keep her calm for a few hours at least, give her body a rest it hadn't had in a week. 

* 

**December 24, 2004**

_When he gets to Heaven   
To Saint Peter he will tell   
One more soldier reporting sir   
I have served my time in hell_

The grass was cold, covered in snow, and he was thinking of ways he could have fixed this. He was thinking of ways this hadn't needed to happen at all. If he'd...carried his flashlight in, he wouldn't be standing here at all on a day when no one should be mourning the people they love. But it goes like that sometimes. It just has to, he thought. 

Knowing that didn't make it any easier and it never would. 

Samantha stood near him, arm in a sling, as she studied the tombstone of her friend. The ground was too frozen to bury the bodies, but the markers were placed nonetheless and so they were standing on hollow ground, imagining the ones that could've been here with them instead of lying on slabs in cold morgues with people who didn't know their names. 

"I have a hole inside, " he heard her say. God, that's the fucking truth. A hole so big and dark it would never, ever go away. 

A few more minutes of silence, and she pulled him away, and he walked her back to her apartment. They sat on her couch over a cup of hot chocolate that neither of them drank and pondered the eternity they were touching. 

"I think -- I think I came back wrong, Sam, " he finally spoke. 

She didn't have to ask what he was referring to. 

"You all did, Matt. Every single one of you. And Patrick Morrisey --" 

"Patrick?" he blinked in recognition of his old friend. 

"He killed himself." 

"God. I -- I never wanted to be that. I don't want to be that." 

"You won't, you've just got to --" 

He set his mug down. 

"But it was my fault, plain and simple." 

She thought about it for a minute. 

"You can't change what you did. You've just got to...find a way to live with it." 

"But there's something missing in me, Sam, something big. And it hurts." 

"I know, " she said. 

* 

He was leaving to see his family, but he had wanted to do this before he went. A flower had seemed fitting, though now it just seemed incredibly cheesy. Danny would have asked for...a deck of cards or a CD or something that meant more than just looking pretty. 

But he'd gone with the flower and so here he stood, Martin Fitzgerald, remembering his friend that hadn't always been his friend and wishing there was a way this could become a hellish dream. 

Instead, here he was on Christmas Eve saying goodbye to a guy he'd known once who liked Al Pacino and baseball and grew up in Florida. He grew up warm and died so very cold. And Martin Fitzgerald dropped his flower and wept. 

* 

**10:34 p.m.**

She found herself here tonight...for him. As a girl, she had been dragged to church on Sunday in her best dresses with her best hair, praying to things and for things she didn't understand. No one had ever explained to her how the world worked and the people in it -- that you couldn't have everything and sometimes people died, and though it hurt, it was meant to happen. 

She went to church for her mother and promptly stopped as soon as she moved away. When she'd met Danny, he'd goaded her into attending Catholic mass with him every so often and she found she liked it, liked the feeling it gave her when she sat in the pew and listened to the words that now started making sense. And Danny, wonderful Danny, would explain it to her in ways that made her wish she'd had faith all along. 

They would have come here tonight, together. They would have watched the movie and come here for the Christmas Eve service and he would have put his arm around her when they sang "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, " leaning in close to make sure she was singing as well. Then he'd tease her about her voice, all the while thinking it sounded like an angel and he'd stand with her in the warm church with the snow falling outside thinking how much he loved her, Samantha, this best friend of his; he'd stand there thinking, there isn't anything better in the world. 

And she'd think the same and they'd crash collectively at one or the other's apartment -- hers, this year -- and sleep in. Then Matt would come over -- he would have brought Alexis -- and Vivian would bring Reggie and they'd all sit down, this fragmented family of theirs and count themselves together as complete. 

Then Danny would have taught her to skate, laughed at her failings and rejoiced her triumphs and held onto her as she would start to fall. Then they'd stop and collapse on the snowy ground and look up at the sky, pretending they could see the stars so dim from the city lights. 

"We all have stars when we die, " he'd tell her and talk again about the ones he'd named for his mother and grandmother and aunt and she'd smile in spite of herself and recite the story in her own head from memory. 

So here she was in church, alone, thinking how different it would be, this year and always. Vivian slid in beside her, coat still tightly bound. 

"I thought I'd find you here, " she spoke, hands on the wooden pew. 

Samantha nodded. "Danny took me every year. It seemed -- I wanted to do it for him." 

"And for yourself, " Vivian added. 

She nodded again. "Yeah, for myself too. I don't -- I don't know what to do, I feel...God, I miss him. How does -- how is it going to get better?" 

"Danny, " she said after a beat, "loved so deeply he was -- he was afraid to let go of anything. He had us in his heart and told himself nothing would ever happen to anyone he loved again. Because of his parents, his mother mostly. And he just -- he couldn't let something happen to you, so he took that bullet, without thinking, and that was the last thing he could give. He gave you a great gift, Sam, he gave you your life. And he'd want you to use that gift, to find a meaning again to keep you whole." 

Vivian's own eyes filled, as did Samantha's, and she fell against the older woman's shoulder for a while as the choir sang a broken chorus in hope and faith for the birth of a man who'd given the world a great gift as well. 

As they left the church, Sam tightened her scarf and looked up at the sky. The brightest star hit her eye and she could see it, even above the lights of the city, and knew this one -- this one was Danny's. 

They had both been so young when they came to this city and they'd found each other so perfectly it had to mean something. They both were lost and shaking with weary pasts, but they found each other. They found the pilgrim souls within themselves, they saw who they were written on the other's face and they found something at once, something so beautiful it made her heart ache because of it. 

"Merry Christmas, " she said, and smiled as it twinkled back to her. 

And for one last moment, on that cold Christmas Eve night, Danny Taylor was alive again. 


	20. Something Beautiful Remains

**Chapter 20: Something Beautiful Remains**

**December 25, 2004 7:34 p.m.**

In all his scenarios and separate lives, all the ways he could've changed and the different paths he could've taken, she still seemed to be there, in every single life he could've lived. She seemed to be the only real thing that did stay, the only real constant. 

And he couldn't push her away, he couldn't make himself stop loving her. Because it was this thing inside him, this thing like air that stuck to you so tightly you couldn't loosen it and you didn't want to. It was overwhelming, so strong and powerful he could drown in it. 

It was this feeling like you knew you wouldn't have to wake up and fake your way through dinner again; wouldn't have to touch a cold pillow; wouldn't have to fall asleep in a cold sweat wondering who you'd be tomorrow, who you'd be with tomorrow, and who you wouldn't be with; it was this feeling like if the whole world fell, the world just fucking fell from the sky, you had this one thing -- this one thing that kept you up, kept you sane and whole. 

When he found her, she was sitting on the stoop of her apartment, ice skates untied, cigarette dangling from her mouth. 

"I didn't know you smoked, " he said through the snow. 

"I don't, " she replied as she blew a straight line through the cold air. 

"Everyone's picking up habits again these days. My brother had a beer, I'm having a cigarette, and we'll all die with our addictions." 

"Sam, " he leaned forward, looking in her eye, "are you all right?" 

"Jack, for God's sakes. My best friend fucking bled to death in my lap and I can still feel it, can't wash it out of my clothes, my hands." 

"Samantha, your brother --" 

"No, no h-he didn't. He may be depressed and anti-social, but he wouldn't throw all that away. He's...he's going to be okay. He's stronger than me, I think." 

She threw the cigarette into the bushes, wiped her hands against her pants. 

"I went to his apartment earlier, picked up these and the symphony tickets and watched _It's a Wonderful Life_. You know, it's a hard movie to watch when you don't exactly agree with the title sometimes and your best friend, who you bought it for, can't watch it with you. It just...just fucking sucks, Jack, " she said, tears threatening again. 

"He bought you those?" 

She nodded. "I can't skate, so he was going to teach me. And now I have these and I still can't skate." 

"And the symphony tickets?" 

"Still have them. The show's at ten, but it's -- it's not much fun going alone." 

She tapped the tips of her skates together. 

"Where's the happy ending, Jack?" she asked, her voice cracking with pain. 

"I haven't found it yet. It's...it's close. Samantha, what do you need me to say?" 

She smiled sadly up at him until it occurred to him what he'd never said. 

"This is it, Sam, this is me, " he spoke, pointing to his heart, "this is me saying I'm sorry and I screwed up and...shit, this is it." 

"This is what?" 

"My apology." 

"For what?" 

"For losing you in the first place." 

For a pause, they remained separate, thinking of their past and future. 

"Sam, " he said, "I hear you don't know how to skate." 

And for the first time in days, she allowed herself a smile. 

"Can you teach me?" she asked. 

He nodded, pulled her up to him and held her with a fierceness he couldn't comprehend. He had started, he realized, in the years since he'd met her -- measuring his life by her. He built his life through her and around her and what she needed, he needed. Because they became the thing he breathed. They were flawed apart and perfect together and he could touch his faith now in tangible increments. 

Their lips met through the snow, flakes falling softly on her hair. 

"I thought of a thousand ways to love you, to tell you so you would know and all I've got it this: Sam, I just love you and I need you because if you're not with me, I feel like this lost soul." 

She smiled at him, tears of continued pain and joy shining in her eyes, and returned the sentiment. 

That thing, that thing that bled through his veins with the same blood that pumped his heart was Samantha Spade. 

She was the one he could stop breathing for. 

[ end ] 


End file.
